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One of the crucial technical disputes in American history, perhaps second only to global warming, is underway. It pits hundreds of government technicians who say the World Trade Center buildings were brought down by airplane impact against hundreds of professional architects and building engineers who insist that the Twin Towers could never have collapsed solely due to the planes and are calling for a new independent investigation. It is a fight that is not going away and is likely to get louder as more building trade professionals sign on to one side or the other.

Better than anyone, David Ray Griffin understands the “enormous importance” of Richard Gage, the Bay Area architect and staunch Republican who founded Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911 Truth).

Paul Wellman

David Ray Griffin

Griffin, the controversial retired Santa Barbara philosophy professor/theologian (Claremont School of Theology), is regarded as the leading investigative force within what is called the 9/11 Truth movement, with seven 9/11 books to his credit, including his bestseller The New Pearl Harbor. Although sometimes challenged (about accuracy), until Gage appeared, Griffin found his greatest stumbling block in public appearances to be this question: If his analysis was true-that two planes could not have brought down three World Trade Center (WTC) buildings without the aid of pre-planted explosives-why didn’t a single U.S. architect or building engineer publicly support him? Now, in three years, Gage has signed up 804 architects and structural engineers, some from top firms, who challenge the official version of the buildings’ collapses.

Notably, the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division has acknowledged that AE911’s core evidence deserves-and will get-FBI scrutiny. In a December 2008 letter, Assistant Director Michael J. Heimbach assessed AE911’s presentation as “backed by thorough research and analysis.”

Bolstering AE911’s case, three scientists working at respected technical laboratories in the U.S. and Europe reported in April that their independent analysis of reputed WTC dust found clear evidence of the highly potent incendiary/explosive “super-thermite,” used by the military.

AE911 Truth has grown rapidly, igniting a struggling grassroots movement of hundreds of other “9/11 Truth” organizations, and spearheading a growing assault on the official story. In recent years, other single-profession 9/11 Truth groups have launched or gained momentum, including those comprised of airline pilots, firefighters, veterans, medical professionals, scholars, lawyers, religious leaders, and former government employees.

Also individually calling for a new inquiry are two dozen retired U.S. military officers and eight former U.S. State Department officials, along with a number of Republicans who have served in high federal positions since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, including former assistant secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts and former deputy assistant secretary of Defense (and retired Marine Corps colonel) Ronald D. Ray.

That Van Jones, Obama’s green jobs “czar,” resigned September 5 in part because he had signed a 2004 petition seeking a new inquiry into 9/11 is testimony to the fact that the reinvestigation movement has brought in skeptics from both political parties even as it remains a hot potato in American public life.

Activists around the country attribute AE911’s professional credibility and its unwavering focus on the WTC as the fuel that has galvanized the movement. The group’s case has been enhanced by its refusal to advance conspiracy theories that are widespread within the movement, including the proposition that key Bush administration figures likely were complicit in the event.

“AE911 represents the biggest boost yet to the credibility of the 9/11 Truth movement,” Griffin said. “So many people identify 9/11 with the towers, and now it’s clear there are far more architects and engineers who have spoken out against the official story than have publicly supported it.”

The Basic Case

Specifically, AE911 Truth makes these arguments:

• Crucial elements of the key government study on the step-by-step events that occurred in the collapse of the WTC buildings don’t stand up to analytical scrutiny. The study was undertaken by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the U.S. Department of Commerce agency responsible for building and other safety codes and standards.

• Airplane crash and subsequent fire aren’t sufficient cause to bring down the towers, not even when combined with the presumed dislodgment of fireproofing that protected the core steel beams in the areas where the planes struck. This dislodgment, NIST firmly asserts, made the steel vulnerable to softening by fire and induced the collapse-the first ever of a steel-framed building hit by fire.

• NIST never tested for explosive residues despite indications, including many eyewitness accounts from first-responders and people who escaped the buildings, that explosives and incendiaries were present. Strikingly, eight years after the event, NIST still argues “there is no hard evidence to warrant such testing” and refuses to order fairly inexpensive tests, doing so even in the face of the 2008 independent study that claimed to find traces in reputed WTC debris of the military incendiary thermite, which cuts through steel. This controversial study has been reinforced by the results published in April in the Open Chemical Physics Journal. Many technical professionals call the failure to test a science research “travesty.”

• The collapse of the three buildings resembles two different types of controlled demolitions and not the bending or toppling of a heated building section that might result from a fire.

In support of these arguments, NIST’s critics cite a large number of highly technical papers, most posted on the Web, that specifically challenge or recalculate scores of elements of the NIST case. (See chart online.) Meanwhile, NIST supporters have posted technical papers on various Web sites seeking to “debunk” NIST challengers, including accusations of “false statements” and manipulation of evidence by AE911 and Gage (see wtc7lies.googlepages.com and AE911truth.org/info). For laypersons, the takeaway is that a profound technical argument is underway, with the technical papers sitting alongside often vituperative blogging on both sides of the WTC dispute.

Following the collapses, NIST assembled a panel of more than 300 staff and external experts and spent three years and $20 million on what it calls the most exhaustive technical study ever of a building collapse. Released in 2005, the initial NIST report concluded that the towers, which NIST agrees could not be brought down by fire alone, collapsed because of a combination of factors. Crucially, this included the presumed fireproofing dislodgment. This allowed certain beams and trusses to soften sufficiently to force an inward bending of perimeter-supporting steel beams, putting so much pressure on the fire-weakened and severed center steel columns (three severed in one tower and five in another, out of 47 in each) that the buildings collapsed in the areas where the planes had struck.

NIST also stated that there was more than enough mass plus acceleration of the upper Twin Towers’ floors as they fell to force a collapse of the lower structure straight down at nearly freefall speed, with each floor adding weight and force to the pressures on the floors below-a theory NIST says is supported by elaborate computer models.

NIST’s report on the third collapsed building, WTC7, released in August 2008, argues that computer modeling of existing evidence also doesn’t support an explosives theory. The report concludes that WTC7 was brought down by seven hours of fires combined with falling debris from the towers that weakened an entire building section, forcing the collapse of a key support column such that the building then caved in.

Aside from an article in a 2006 issue of Popular Mechanics, which debunked critiques of NIST and the explosives theory, there has been no in-depth examination in the press of both sides of this argument even after AE911 Truth began to organize and present evidence challenging the official narrative and Popular Mechanics‘ defense of it.

courtesy ae 911 truth

Richard Gage

Enter Richard Gage

Within his 20-year career, Richard Gage, 53, has designed numerous fireproofed steel-framed buildings. In recent years, his work has focused on being the onsite managing architect during actual building construction.

Gage, a Reagan supporter, had a moment of clarity when he first heard alternative theories of 9/11 presented in March 2006 by Griffin. As he tells it, he was driving to a construction meeting and crossed the talk-radio political divide that day to listen to progressive Pacifica Radio’s KPFA interviewing Griffin.

“What Griffin was saying is that the ends of these beams that were ejected out of the World Trade Center at 55-70 miles per hour were dripping with molten steel and they landed more than 500 feet away,” Gage recounted. The station also played eyewitness interviews recorded after 9/11, including with first-responders, who described hearing explosions and seeing flashes of light that would support an explosives/incendiaries theory.

“So I began looking at the research and official report myself. The more I read, the more disturbed I got, and I realized fairly quickly what I needed to do, and that was to start Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.”

Before this, Gage noted, he hadn’t paid heed to the technical details of the collapse. Particularly striking to him was that the eyewitness interviews had been released to the N.Y. Times by court order in August 2005-nearly four years after 9/11.

“This was information that has been hidden by New York City, and it became obvious why they hid it,” Gage said. “So I began looking at the research and official report myself. The more I read, the more disturbed I got, and I realized fairly quickly what I needed to do, and that was to start Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.”

As its founder and executive director, the soft-spoken, gentlemanly Gage has since become something like a subversive Al Gore, delivering his disturbingly inconvenient PowerPoint presentation that challenges most of the key elements of the NIST report. (See AE911truth.org.) Somewhat obsessed with recruiting as many building professionals as possible, Gage left his job and now, supported by contributions to AE911, spends much of his time traveling from city to city presenting the core forensic case to bodies of fellow experts.

“Most all of the architects and engineers I present to are completely overwhelmed, as I was, with the forensic-based scientific facts surrounding this case,” Gage said. “And all of them, virtually, sign up on our Web site to demand a new investigation by Congress.” Gage said he gets similar buy-in from nonprofessional groups, including conservatives.

Gage maintains that even allowing for the chunks of fireproofing NIST argues were stripped away by airplane impact, steel framing serves as a heat conductor, actually cooling fire and equalizing the burden on any one steel section. “The steel doesn’t get to the temperature that would cause it to weaken,” he said. “No steel-framed high-rise has ever collapsed due to fire, and we have almost 100 examples.”

As for NIST’s theory that once the towers’ impact-area beams gave way, the mass above them would rapidly crush the lower stories, Gage argues that this premise ignores the laws of physics inherent in the resistance provided by the powerful steel structure of the lower floors-a statement that earns him major buy-in from building professionals. “No force can crush that kind of a structure at - freefall acceleration. It’s ludicrous,” he said. “Not only that, the videos show that 95 percent of the South Tower is being blown outside, indicating explosions. And the top of the North Tower is being reduced in volume from 15 stories to seven stories before it even starts to drop. Half of its mass is destroyed and displaced laterally in the first two seconds. Later, the rest of the mass has completely disappeared and then blown outward such that there’s nothing left to drive this building down to the ground. This remaining mass cannot fall at near freefall speed and crush 80,000 tons of steel and pulverize to powder 90,000 tons of concrete and create tons of molten metal by some unknowable process.”

NIST’s Defense

Defending NIST’s research, NIST spokesperson Michael Newman responded that the amount of fireproofing dislodged by airplane impact is a factor crucially not present in fires in other high-rise fires cited by Gage. NIST, supported by a number of independent building and explosives professionals who are critical of AE911, also stands behind its theory of the upper floors’ impact. “Basically, gravity and the utter force of the upper floors forced the towers down. If you have 20 floors of mass suddenly released, as it goes downward it picks up more mass and more force-and, yes, you can have a building collapse in 10 seconds and, yes, it is physically possible. We believe that three years of hard scientific technical investigation based around a tremendous amount of evidence and confirmed by many physicists will give you the same conclusions.”

Newman argued that while the upper stories’ collapse created powerful pneumatic air pressure that blew outward substantial debris, mimicking explosions, NIST’s calculations confirmed there was sufficient remaining mass to hammer down the lower floors, each failed floor adding to the descending mass.

Gage and many other “not-so-fast” scientific and professional colleagues argue that they easily found major flaws in the NIST study as well as omission of significant evidence.

Most prominently, the 47-story steel structure Building 7, never struck by a plane, collapsed anyway-from hours of fires and damage from falling debris, NIST said. Dismissing this as “nonsense for a modern steel building designed to withstand such fires and specifically designed such that no one column’s failure would bring down the building,” Gage and others note that a major clue that something was producing far more heat than a jet-fuel or office fire could are alleged sightings by some first-responders and later by some of the debris-removal crews of molten metal, like hot lava, some found glowing in the basements of WTC buildings up to three weeks after 9/11-far longer than jet-fuel fires could produce. (Interviews of many cleanup crewmembers by a demolition company found no evidence of molten steel sightings. Gage cites evidence to the contrary.)

NIST’s answer: Any molten metal sightings, including metal seen pouring from the South Tower, were likely airplane aluminum. Newman added that NIST wasn’t presented with evidence of molten steel and if some melted, this occurred after the event, in fires underground. Gage dismissed this as “impossible without a source of oxygen such as from thermate,” adding that molten metal seen in NIST-cited videos isn’t the color of molten aluminum.

Gage and other professionals point to other indications of explosives. Besides vast mushroom clouds of dust and debris exploding outward at the top of both towers, videos show squibs-puffs of smoke or air-shooting out of the towers above and below the crash areas. Moreover, some on-air reporters described the explosions, joining first-responders and escapees as eyewitnesses.

According to Newman, NIST determined that the squibs and mushroom clouds were caused by compressed air from the force of the collapse finding openings and blowing debris, dust, and air puffs outward in an explosive manner. (NIST critics claim this is refuted by independent technical calculations.) Eyewitness accounts of explosions, Newman added, weren’t evident in 10,000 interviews NIST conducted, and a few such reports can be explained by other phenomena.

Critics of AE911 agree. Typically, the Journal of Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories argues that explosive sounds likely derived from electrical and air conditioning transformers exploding, the sound of floors collapsing onto each other, or rivets popping all at once as the pressure got to them. “The way I see it, it had to be the rivets,” the Journal quotes one firefighter saying.

Enter Dr. Jones and Thermite

Supporting AE911’s theory is Dr. Steven E. Jones, a nuclear physicist known for his work in cold fusion. Jones said that in 2006 he was forced into early retirement from his position as a professor at Brigham Young University because of his attempts to show that powerful explosives were present in the WTC towers.

After Jones’s initial analysis was criticized harshly for flaws by BYU’s own building engineering department, Jones and other scientists co-authored a new critique accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Open Civil Engineering Journal that mentioned thermite as a potential culprit in the buildings’ collapses.

This was followed by another peer-reviewed research paper published last April in a scientific journal. Co-authored by Jones and Associate Professor Niels Harrit of Copenhagen University’s famed Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark, and by Dr. Jeffrey Farrer, lab manager for BYU’s Transmission Electron Microscopy Lab, as well as four other researchers, the paper provided vivid microscopic photo evidence of highly flammable red-gray chips that the authors say appear to be super-thermite found in reputed WTC dust samples sent to Jones by four New Yorkers who had separately collected them shortly after 9/11.

“So, the body of evidence all ties together to support the hypotheses of a controlled demolition.”

Thermite, a mixture of aluminum powder and iron oxide, will burn through steel. Adding silicon, magnesium, or titanium makes it thermate, also known as nano-thermite or “super-thermite,” a substance with an accelerated capacity to cut through steel. It is used primarily in incendiary grenades. “Dr. Jones found the chemical signature of thermite,” Gage said. “So, the body of evidence all ties together to support the hypotheses of a controlled demolition.”

In an interview, Jones said microanalysis of the four samples of dust collected from various sites in Lower Manhattan revealed not only extensive presence of red-gray chips of unignited nano-thermite, but it also found significant traces of microspheres of previously molten iron that normally are the product of incendiary explosions far hotter than jet-fuel fires.

“These red chips are very unusual and very prevalent, and they test out as being consistent with a form of thermite,” Jones said. “We can ignite them and they react very violently when touched off. So how do you explain their presence in the towers’ dust?”

Jones noted that the U.S. Geological Survey, which did some testing on WTC dust for NIST and found the microspheres, never tested for explosives or incendiaries because NIST never ordered them. “I have been encouraging them to test early dust samples, but they haven’t responded,” Jones said.

Jones said he sent a letter in April 2008 to NIST about his original findings, inviting NIST to test its own dust for such chips. In public comments since, NIST has said that Jones’s research is not “scientifically valid” because Jones can’t prove the “chain of custody” of the dust he tested.

Other groups that support NIST’s findings (debunking911.com, 911myths.com) argue that neither the samples nor Jones’s tests are reliable. Jones replied simply: “They don’t need my dust to test. They have plenty of dust of their own where they know the chain of custody. They just won’t test it.”

NIST Counters

When asked the key question about testing WTC dust for thermite, Newman replied: “So why didn’t we look for explosive residues in the towers? Because there was no evidence saying to go that way. There was a lot of evidence saying look at the impact of the plane, the loss of fireproofing, the bowing of the perimeter beams, which was the final straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Even so, why not test debris and dust-a relatively simple operation-to silence the question of explosives or incendiaries?

Newman explained, “We did calculate the quantity of thermite that would be needed : and found there would be a tremendous amount needed in each column to get it to melt. : You would need thousands of pounds, which would make it unlikely it would be used for a controlled explosion.”

“We don’t try to debate or argue with these folks because they have their opinions and what they believe is evidence but to us it is counterproductive to engage in debate.”

Newman acknowledged that NIST’s response that it sees “no need” to test dust for any form of thermite may not satisfy critics. And he added: “We don’t try to debate or argue with these folks because they have their opinions and what they believe is evidence but to us it is counterproductive to engage in debate. We’d rather let the body of evidence we presented stand on its own merits. We feel this is a very good piece of work-in many ways pushing investigations way beyond what’s gone before. Our work is to help strengthen buildings, and proof of the validity of our research is that most all our recommendations for changing building codes have been accepted by the international organization that models building codes. That wouldn’t have happened if they doubted our findings.”

To Gage and his allies, NIST’s refusal to test and its questionable conclusions derive from government-dependent employees and defense contractors fearful that evidence of explosives would be too traumatic for the public-and too risky to NIST captains answerable to political superiors. Hence, NIST’s refusal to address fully scientific papers challenging nearly every element of its case, including its theory that pneumatic air pressure mimicked explosives and that tons of nano-thermite (not less-powerful thermite) would be needed.

Is conspiracy behind the World Trade Center's collapse?

Inevitably, of course, the gorilla in the room is what if AE911 and the Jones team are correct in their analysis? The dark notion that the hijackers wouldn’t need airplanes if they could plant explosives would raise questions of who did have access and what was their motive? And how would America deal with such an investigation against the backdrop of suppositions that some officials in government were complicit? This idea is virtually unthinkable to most of the public, much less something the American political system can handle. A Democratic Congress wouldn’t cut off funds for a war it opposed nor impeach a president who broke laws; how would it cope with the cataclysmic implications of new 9/11 evidence that disproved the official story? How would any president, much less “let’s only look ahead” Barack Obama, confront such a nightmare?

All of which suggests that a great breakthrough from AE911’s efforts isn’t likely. The forces of denial, in the system and in most of our minds, are innately powerful and probably sufficient to mitigate against a reopened investigation. Despite this, Gage sees his role as provoking a better investigation.

“We and millions of other Americans are part of a grassroots movement,” he said.

Comments

That's nice, defer to a South Park episode. It has suddenly all become clear: Why are rational and questioning minds marginalized in this great land of free speech and democracy? It seems many of us are letting Matt Stone and Trey Parker do our thinking for us. That is almost as bad as letting; McCarthy, McNamara, Kissinger, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Paulson do the same: Oh, but wait...

South Park is a witty show no doubt. I've grown up with it to an extent, and sometimes the show's observations are pretty relevant. However to let two admitted provocateurs hold sway over your perception of an extremely pivotal event in our world's history is well, for lack of a better word, ridiculous.

Conspiracy theory? "Remember the Maine" and while you're at it, remember the Gulf of Tonkin as well.

Everyone loves a conspiracy theory. Too bad it is all bunk. Loved the South Park Episode... It is a pretty simple comparison between our society and how intelligent people get wrapped up in it. "You almost got away with it you sneaky butthole"

We could just spend billions and reconstruct the towers and then ram some planes into them, see if they collapse, and when they do what would all the nay sayers say?Hmmm

Trotting out David Ray Griffin's academic achievements -- retired Santa Barbara philosophy professor/theologian (Claremont School of Theology) -- doesn't provide credibility to his fantasy: A faith in things that aren't there and which can't be proved is a prerequisite to obtaining a degree in "Theology."

Interesting peek into the fever-dreams of this odd confederacy of conspiracy advocates, none-the-less.

>>This idea is virtually unthinkable to most of the public, much less something the American political system can handle.

That you are courageous enough to then take a very balanced position on this highly intense issue is surprising and rare. It's well written and the conclusions hit the nail on the head. Thank you for this.

Sorry to see the hammering by those who need to insert nonstop ad hominem attacks. Many of them are likely part of the "101st Fighting Keyboarders" -- weblog authors who are "very enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it". These squads come out to throw stones because they don't like the outcome of science they disagree with. Today's brownshirts. We all have to deal with them.

Oh boy, get out the popcorn, comments readers. The Indie has stricken the jackpot here! Let's cut to the chase, shall we?The idea that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled demolition simply does not stand up to one fact: keeping such a project secret is not possible. The use of super-termites is much more credible than the allegations put forth by these conspiracy theorists, and yes, that's what they are despite their protestations to the contrary.Please, Indie, exercise a little better judgment in the future before giving voice to such demonstrably weak yet alluringly provocative arguments. Your journalistic standards have taken a huge blow (although it is an enjoyable read!).

Although this 911-Conspiracy is a crock, I don't think the Independent running an expositive essay on the subject should be considered a blanket endorsement. And the article doesn't attempt to represent the Independent's position.

Attempting to be fair-minded and comprehensive almost requires trodding across shaky ground.

Presenting only agreeable ideas and information, or creating conversations only sanctioned by a philosophy would be propaganda, not a news organization.

OK Binky, point taken, perhaps I'm harshing the Indie's mellow a little, but the overall tone of the article, including it's rather ludicrous title, all point towards weak journalism. This piece has appeared in several other rags across the state, some of them of a decidedly lesser even-handedness than our beloved Indie. As I said, it's a fun read, if nothing else just to parse out the innuendo, faulty logic, leaps of faith, and psuedo science ("it could be super-thermite"), of the CT idolaters. It is of course much smarter to imagine the rustling in the grass is a lion, since there's no harm done if it isn't. But that doesn't make it so.

If the Indy wrote this nonsense piece to increase traffic to their site it appears to be working. It looks like the tin foil hat crowd has showed up. I wonder how many of the conspiracy theory posters actually live in SB? I imagine they are the types that spew their nonsense about underground bases and what not on internet messages boards all day and comment on any article regarding a subject like this. Anyways I better get back to eating my soylent green and watching reruns of the moon landing.

It is no secret that fireproofing on trusses is only designed for a simple fire, is only designed to resist limited heat for just so long, does not function even when partially dislodged from a truss since trusses are uniquely failure prone, and was likely already compromised from abuses when the interiors were renovated over and over or from careless tradesmen. Any conventional building of that shape would have toppled not miraculously telescoped after the events as the steel gave way on one side and threw the tower off balance. Thousands more would have been killed that day and we would be looking at a 30 year red-tape-rebuild not 15. The incessant backwash after 9-11 proves that the US no longer has the rare metal it took to defeat the Axis powers or to build the Interstates. We are left with revisionists, theory weavers, and citizens who don't want to face facts on any front. Move on. The fact has always been that our form of democracy requires the 'blank' to hit the fan before action is permitted. Keep it plain and simple.

This article is a welcome, long delayed breath of fresh air! Finally, a publication has ventured outside the corporate media taboo which has kept this controversial, highly relevant topic under the public radar. To date, those challenging any aspect of official 9/11 story have been met with either a roaring silence, or a roaring chorus of "conspiracy theory" accusations (conveniently ignoring the fact that the official story is also a conspiracy theory, and a far-fetched one to boot).

There is a huge difference between "asking questions" and "making accusations". Richard Gage, Steven Jones and a host of other experts are asking questions based on solid, peer- reviewed scientific evidence. On the other hand, those promoting the official story have made conspiracy theory accusations, aided enormously by (1) the total and absolute complicity of the corporate media, and (2) a broad preconception, with which a large section of the US public are comfortable, the notion that "all muslims and arabs are terrorists or potential terrorists".

At first, we were so emotionally drained by this "shock and awe" event that we were collectively infantilized, clinging onto the notion that "our leaders" in DC would look after us against the "evildoer brownskinned bearded hordes whose religious faith was based on violence", as a scared child clings to mommy during a thunderstorm pleading, "Protect me, please". "When will it stop" "Is it safe now"?

Once the initial shock wore off, many people started to look at the attacks rationally. There were problems with the official story, relating to every aspect of this multifaceted event. This initiated a shameful and ignominious chapter in this nation's history: suddenly, it became "NOT OK" to ask questions. This was the moment when America betrayed herself, the moment when liberty and justice took a back seat to blind faith and obedience.

We are now climbing out that dark abyss, that nasty foretaste of government by fear, rather than by consent. The shock and awe is wearing off, and we are starting to make baby steps regarding these painful matters, such as discussing and analyzing the events of 9/11 in a mature and rational way, one that befits a free, (as opposed to banana) republic.

This piece in the Independent is one of many such rational discussions, and there will be many more to come. At some point, the whole truth will emerge, it is just a matter of time, hopefully sooner rather than later. And it will be another breath of fresh air when those who quit the name-calling or the standard "6th grade conspiracy theory accusations" as soon as anything appears which runs afoul of their comfort zones!

I believe that America is made of tougher stuff, and we can challenge and overcome our demons without wimping out and evading our responsibilities as citizens. In a small, but highly significant way, the Independent has proven such.

What happened to the billions of dollars worth of gold boullion that had been kept in the basement of the WTC? Why wasn't the site of this catastrophe treated as a crime scene? Why did we watch, day after day, hundreds of trucks, carting away debris, that should have been carefully analyzed? Where was the plane debris after the "crash" at the Pentagon? Our government knew that they could work this scam on the "scared sheep" of American citizens...shameful.

Now if some of the nay-sayers here would actually read the article and look into Gage's research rather than posting one of South Park's WORST episodes ever.....

Somebody said the Saudis were paying off 9/11 truthers... you are pretty clueless considering Bush admin was in bed with the Saudis and they were the group behind the attacks!! Why would the Saudis want the American public to find out about a deception that they were in part behind so that we could go to war with their neighbors??

As mentioned in the article, there is a dispute whether World Trade Center 7, which was not hit by a plane, was brought down due to office fires and structural damage, OR due to a controlled demolition. Watch this very short clip, and judge yourself...

"The idea that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled demolition simply does not stand up to one fact: keeping such a project secret is not possible."

Really? The Catholic church shuffled around pervert priests in a conspiracy that lasted hundreds of years without one sickened insider stepping forward, not one reporter or prosecutor stepping forward, in fact to this day, insiders do not step forward to admit, out of guilt, that they stood by and did nothing while knowing that pervs were being investigated by pervs and that a huge conspiracy to cover up through bullying, intimidation and smearing of victims was going hog wild for hundreds of years. Today, that conspiracy is an obvious and irrefutable truth. But back then smug condescending minions like you dismissed those who brought up these truths labeling them as kooks so as to dismiss them without looking into what they had to say.

Okay, so there is an example that completely shreds your world view that powerful groups are incapable of keeping something hideous under wraps.

Need another one, thousands worked on the Manhattan project. No one blabbed. 70,000 in Witness Protection. No one blabs.

NIST is an extremely dishonest, disingenuous organization. They said that they calculated the amount of thermite it would take, but thermite and the military grade super-thermite that was found by Jones and crew do not react the same and are not in the same ballpark as far as explosive power. Thermite gets hot, collects and melts in pools. The military grade super thermite can be applied like paint, and then an electrical charge can set it off leading to a very fast and very HOT reaction that can melt steal almost instantly. NIST has NOT, I repeat NOT looked into this at all.

They also mentioned that molten metal that was seen was probably the aluminum from the plane.. but there are witnesses who saw pools of flowing molten metal several WEEKS after the attacks during the clean up operation.. In fact even up to 6 weeks or so later they were still digging up hot, molten material. There is evidence in the clean-up of hot, molten material that could not have possibly gotten that way from jet fuel or office furniture fires, let alone sustained that heat underground considering the fires were at the TOP of the towers.

I implore some of you naysayers to look into this stuff, seriously, the government has been turning a blind eye to very legitimate claims and all you can do is make jokes. Very sickening.

In 2006, WTC owner, Larry Silverstein confessed that he and the "fire chief" agreed to "pull" the building (WTC-7). This confession was captured in a 2006 PBS documentary "America Rebuilds". Millions have viewed this video but not one law enforcement agency has investigated Silverstein's confession or even obtained the name of the "fire chief" he allegedly talked with on the phone. This event demonstrates the mammoth lawlessness of the 9/11 murders followed by a September 2008 free-fall of the stock market that consolidated banks that further enriched the rich.

As Gandhi once said ~ An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because very few choose to see or acknowledge it.

Here are 40 experts, including the Chairman, 9/11 Commission, Thomas H. Kean, Former Governor of New Jersey and Vice Chairman, 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Homeland Security Advisory Council ~ sounding off in short quotes about their misgivings with the 9/11 commission and the far too many questions that are still UNANSWERED.

For those interested in how our website operates, when we have stories of interest beyond our locality, such as this one, we often get many folks from out of town registering to make one or more comments.

If the implication is that the same person is posting under different names, it's more likely many people are registering and commenting for the first time. Another recent example of this is here: http://www.independent.com/news/2009/...

Iriesouljah: The wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan would not have been possible without 9/11, the NeoCon/Bush Administration's dream ticket which enabled congressional support for not only their "endless war" agenda, the "Patriot" (!) Acts, the suspension of habeas corpus and Posse Comitatus, presidential signing statements, the trashing of the delicate balance between the 3 branches of government giving the executive branch near dictatorial power (if "required"), illegal spying on US citizens from within the US, secret military "tribunals" (kangaroo courts), extrajudicial CIA "renditions", torture, the politicization of law enforcement.... just for starters.

This debate is about as important as debates can get; obviously, whoever ordered the World Trade Center #1, #2 and #7 to be rigged with nanothermite has not been brought to justice and is still out there, to pull another stunt in the future. If "Al Qaeda" was responsible for this aspect of the attacks, then some of their number were not only able to obtain state of the art composite explosives from the very few places that have developed it, such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, but also evade WTC security (Securicom) in order to place the several tons necessary to bring the buildings down in the manner we all observed that day.

It is very telling from both the article and the comments which side is able to intellectually communicate their ideas and which side relies on comedic misdirection, obfuscation, ad hominem.

When is the side who defends the government's version of events which have proven to be false and a small group who committed these horrific criminal acts going to have a rational debate about this topic? Ever?

A superb article. Refreshing to have a real investigativearticle instead of the character assassinations and vitriol thatpose as "news reporting."

The independent investigators have done their homework. I find nothing on the debunking sites that stand up to the scientific scrutiny that Jones/Gage/Griffin have offered.

The metal spheres indicate formerly molten metal. The characteristic elemental signature strongly suggests they were derived from a thermite source. Now, they have identified unreacted nano-thermitic explosives. What's more, once this material is ignited, it produces the spheres that are found throughout the dust.

Well, I'm afraid that conspiracies happen all the time. Askany police investigator, or prosecutor. This term is a shallowrefuge of no-nothings. It is meant to prevent you fromasking important, necessary questions by eliciting fear.Don't fall for it. Ask the questions. Think critically. Thesebrave researchers have.

Jones/Gage and Griffin have provided overwhelming evidence. We can either look away and ignore ourresponsibilities as citizens, or we can demand a newindependent investigation.

thanks to the independent for publishing this. It is long overdue. To think, one of the greatest crime scenes in our country and the evidence is hauled to the dump as fast as possible. For those of you who trust our government, I sincerely hope you never get sick, loose your job, become homeless, or have children who sign up for their military. Not only will they forget about you, but the majority of the brainwashed population will turn a deaf ear to your plight. Who is to blame? Terrorists with box cutters? welcome to the United States of (corporate welfare) America.

Mr's Steven Jones, Richard Gage and Neils Harrit have asked the NIST on more than one occasion to debate them openly as to what really brought down these WTC buildings in NYC. You'll notice that I said WTC buildings and NOT WTC complex ? The reason being that there were more than three buildings in the WTC complex. It's just that the three that collapsed were the same buildings built with extra reinforcement so as to withstand incredible damage, fire..etc and remain whole. The towers were so simply because of their tremendous size, building 7 because it housed tons of classified information, was a clearing house for the FBI, CIA (second largest CIA complex outside Langley Virginia) SEC, IRS,Dept of Justice..etc...Building 7 also house the office of emergency management for Manhattan. Buildings 1,2 and 7 were the only buildings to collapse and the only buildings that contained tons of molten steel in their sub basements. Thermal imaging from space revealed temperatures in the areas of the footprints of these buildings at 1200 to 1500 degrees farenheit weeks after these collapses. None of the other buildings in the complex collapsed, building 6 had a hole blown out through the top that could be seen from space, building 5 was completely drowned in debris, both these were lesser buildings structurally than buildings 1,2 and 7 yet never collapsed even though they absorbed tremendous damage from the towers debris. If something enters the building and creates a void it simultaneously fills said void unless it exits the other side. The ridiculous notion that an aluminum airplane (a big beer can with wings) can crush and tear steel is ludicrous. A good example of this is a youtube video of a jetliner making an emergency landing off the Comoros Islands, its left engine snags on a shallow reef and the plane goes to pieces. Case closed.I'm afraid if I were to bet I'd take the 200,000 ton steel and concrete building over a coral reef. The official story of 9/11 and buildings turning to dust because of planes is embarrassingly criminally stupid to whoever concocted this farce. It is standard procedure to test for explosives in a collapse, especially when 100's of witnesses are screaming explosion...Thank God for NYCCAN doing yeomans work and getting this on the ballot for the voters to decide. A REAL INVESTIGATION with subpoena powers will stop the stupidity and hopefully some of the people in charge of enforcing the law will find the wherewithal to do their jobs..

I'd like to add a thanks to The Santa Barbara Independent for running this.I can only hope that other media outlets will follow suit. Sorry for the rant but it's necessary. I worked in the south tower for Morgan Stanley and left 1 week before this happened to move back to Texas to work. I lost three good friends in this mass murder. I realize I could easily have been included in that number. I DO NOT discomfort my friends families by asking hard questions. They call me regularly to talk and are asking the same things themselves. They tell me they've been offered blood money to drop criminal complaints and civil lawsuits initiated simply to get to the truth. It disgusts them that what passes for jurisprudence in NY is so openly criminal. It does me too.

Please CT aficionados, do not confuse dismissal of weak and unscientific research as condoning the government's "official" story. This is the "with us or against us" attitude that invites such tragic campaigns as the "war on terror". You will acknowledge that, in the face of overwhelming evidence, there are still those who will believe that which the preponderance of evidence does not support (take global warming, for example). There are certainly open questions regarding that tragic day, perhaps a few of significance in terms of assigning responsibility. But it is a giant leap to gather all of these questions together and bundle them into a controlled demolition of the twin towers and WT7, or whatever your particular version of the conspiracy entails. I've got nothing against faith, just don't call it science.

tegrat, you claim such a thing is impossible because with the number of people involved it could not be kept secret particularly due to the guilt that would propel anyone with any decency at all to speak up.

However, the Catholic church had a conspiracy of abuse continue unabated for hundreds of years without a peep from a single sickened insider wishing to expose those in power who were letting it happen.

So, conspiracies do and have existed with great numbers of people who do not speak up. It is a sad part of human nature, but it is the truth. It takes a tremendously rare amount of moral courage to speak up and expose the abuses of power.

(1) Afterwards, EPA tested the site of the alleged downing of Flight 93 for jet fuel contamination of the groundwater. No jet fuel traces were detected from the 5500 gallons on board when the flight terminated.

(2) Osama bin Laden, according to FBI spokesperson Rex Tomb, is not wanted for 9/11, because "we (the FBI) do not have hard evidence linking OBL to 9/11". Similarly, the DOJ has not indicted bin Laden for these crimes.

(3) We were told that the alleged hijackers were armed with "boxcutters". The sole source of this information was former solicitor general Ted Olson, who said he received cell calls from Barbara, his wife, a passenger on AA77. According to FBI in the trial transcript of (alleged 20th hijacker) Zacarias Moussaoui, "zero" cellphone calls were made from AA77. If the phone records and FBI evidence is correct, then Ted Olson lied. The "boxcutter" story is a fabrication.

(4) 5 men, disguised as Palestinians were arrested by FBI in NJ, "highfiving" and dancing, videotaping the WTC attacks. They had $4,700 in a sock, maps with the WTC circled in ink, false passports, and explosives-sniffing dogs went "berserk". It turned out that the men were from Mossad. Carl Cameron of Fox News covered this in depth before Fox was ordered to drop the story with all traces excised from the Fox archives. The men were quietly deported to Israel where later, the group-leader, Sivan Kurzberg, admitted on Israeli TV that "they were sent in advance to document the event".

(5) One of the alleged hijackers (Walid al Shehri) saw his picture in the papers after 9/11 as "one of the 19". A Saudi Airlines pilot, Shehri was in Morocco on airline business. He turned himself in to the US Embassy, protesting his innocence!

(6) The 19 men were "positively identified" within days of the attacks via DNA matches. This infers that DNA samples from each were in US government custody prior to 9/11, and samples were recovered within days to make positive matches. In comparison only 425 (out of almost 3000) victims had been identified after 6 weeks.

(7) The occupancy for the 4 flights averaged only 25%, usually being >85%. Since the probability of 25% occupancy has been quoted as 1 in 12 or 0.0833, the rough chance of all 4 flights being so empty is about 0.00005!

(8) The 19 men showed little interest in Islam, to the point that none had made the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, obligatory in the Muslim calendar (despite15 being Saudi!). They were more interested in strippers, lapdances, cocaine, alcohol, gold jewelry, and gambling.. verboten in Islam No virgins for these guys in the afterlife!

and

(9): 6 of the 10 Commissioners have publicly stated that their "inquiry" was a failure, and Senior Counsel to the Commission has stated that the greater part of the Commission's content is "untrue".

Thank you SB Independent for showcasing the story. Thanks to responders who have included links. I've been following the 9/11 truth movement for only a short while. I find particularly compelling the story of the mysterious death of Barry Jennings 2 days before the release of the official Tower 7 report, a man who was trapped in tower 7 for hours the morning of 9/11, who experienced explosions which blew out the floor from underneath him - all before either WTC tower came down. His story absolutely counters the possibility of Tower 7 being anything but a demolition. See http://barryjenningsmystery.blogspot....

Despite the amount of nonsensical and pseudo-scientific claims made on most (not all) 9/11 truth websites, such as; no plane theories, space beams, pods under planes, etc) there remains a large body of evidence that is highly compelling and firmly established.

No one has satisfactorily explained the speed and symmetry of all three high-rise "collapses"

-WTC7's perfect implosion NIST was finally forced to admit freefall did in fact occur after stating unequivocally again and again on video that freefall was "impossible" because even a weak structure has some support. David Chandler (ae911) pointed out that the video shows freefall.

The fact is whether it was freefall or 50% slower is irrelevant. Even a single intact vertical column in that building would have caused an asymmetrical collapse.Only explosives (NIST's 'a new phenomenon' is a fantasy)

NIST scientists should be ashamed - they are taking part in covering up mass murder and treason. Otherwise they would have simply tested for explosive residues, as the law demands and put all this to rest.They would released their modeling inputs, the molten metal, etc.

-The lateral energies.So powerful that they sent steel beams and debris flying blocks away from the World Trade Center yet many of the sub-level spaces remained intact.

-The Dust Clouds: WTC 1&2 created thick clouds whose massive size and cauliflower features are indicative of extremely powerful releases of energy. Pyrcolastic flows are usually associated with volcanoes but are also seen in explosive demolition,

-Missing Bodies: People were blasted apart and evaporated.

One family got back their loved one's femur bone which had been located '2.5 blocks away' from the WTC .That is more than well over 1000 families got back of their loved one's remains of which no trace was found.

Not counting the 122 people on flights 11 & 175 there were approximately 2,630 people killed in the WTC. Keep in mind that falling debris killed many people on the streets and these probably account for most of the approximately '300 intact bodies' found.

Authorities conducted a comprehensive 2 year search for victims by looking through the tons of smaller debris that was carted to Freshkills Landfill in Staten Island. (*how Popular Mechanics tried (and failed) to debunk that the fact that the structural steel was shipped directly from ground zero to overseas recyclers with no investigation)

At Freshkills Landfill they spread the smaller debris out on conveyor belts which then moved past a line of attendants who worked to cull out any body parts they could locate by hand.

Despite this prolonged search and the use of advanced DNA recovery techniques, there remains almost 1100 people completely unaccounted for. 200 DNA tests matched a single individual. Only 70 of the 343 NYFD personnel killed were located. Keep in mind many people were idndtified from test tube size pieces.

"The results of the examination are striking. They reveal a phenomenon never before observed in building fires: eutectic reactions, which caused "intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese." The New York Times described this as "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation." -Jim Hoffman

"A one-inch column has been reduced to Half-inch thickness. Its edges--which are curled like a paper scroll--have been thinned to almost razor sharpness. Gaping holes --some larger than a silver dollar--let light shine through a formerly solid steel flange. This Swiss cheese appearance shocked all of the fire-wise professors, who expected to see distortion and bending--but not holes." -WPI

*thermite has two main components, a fuel and an oxidizer.

-The Fires that could not be extinguished.

How do we explain the fires that would not go out?For months they poured water on the pile..so much that they were creating a lake in lower Manhattan,and still it burned. finally being extinguished on December 19th or 20th.

So there were office fires that were on the upper floors of the towers. And in the cores, where the stairs were and where people escaped and surived? No, there was no real fuel in the core)The towers then exploded into dust sending it's structural elements and contents flying for hundreds of feet. Up and out like canon shot, pulverizing contents and concrete. Fires then burned underground for over 3 months. What exactly was it that was burning underground for so long?

It is the massive cores that were in the towers which makes the official story impossible because each could hold up several times the weight of the entire building. http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/arch/...

The top of any structure bears the least amount of weight.How does anyone imagine that, for example in the case of the North Tower which was hit on the 95th floor, that the top 15 floors of this building could crush and so thoroughly destroy (and send it flying in all directions) all the rest of that hard cold structural steel at virtually freefall speed?

'To believe the official story requires that you believe that the steel frames of these buildings provided virtually no more resistance to the falling rubble than did air.' -jim hoffman.

Very objective, it's sad to believe that some will cling to all hope that the truth is not as presented. How can you accept all of these excuses in place of science. It's pretty easy not to find, what your not looking for.

I think its pretty difficult for an objective person to know what to think about an article like this. Most of us regular Indy readers aren't the kinds of architects, structural engineers, civil engineers, and builders that deal with extremely large skyscrapers (if one of you are, you should speak up). And none of us are likely to be high explosives experts, or chemists and physicists with specific domain expertise.

So I find it interesting that so many readers are taking strong positions on one side or the other.

I prefer to remain objective and let the technical aspects be debated by those with the necessary skills and access to data - skills and access which I doubt anyone in this thread has.

One thing though ... the contention that Thermite was used is a pretty serious accusation. I don't understand why NIST won't test their samples to put this issue to rest. If they're confident Thermite wasn't used, then let's put that issue to bed once and for all. If the test is negative, that will really set back Gage's theory. But if it tests positive, whoa!

It's best to treat the previous infantile comment with the contempt it deserves. There's always gotta be *somebody* muddying the waters with irrelevant, asinine and wholly unrelated material. How about we also also stay on topic?

BTW, webadmin, you can easily ferret out those who post under duplicate names by capturing IP addresses, as does another local online news source. I'd like to see you do that and post the occurence of multiple names from the same address. Anonymity is important, but easily abused.

And where, oh where, is Don McDermott, who must certainly believe that the 9/11 attack was a conspiracy by the Bush/Cheney devils.

This entire article, along with the claims of Gage et al, are ludicrous. Come on Independent, I once thought of you as a source for good INVESTIGATIVE journalism. Why didn't you at least TRY to fact check half the things these people are telling you? Just come on over to UCSB, and I can show you evidence to disprove dozens of the things these "truthers" are saying. There are dozens of experts on most every college campus in this country that can show you evidence to prove the claims of A&E for 911 Truth are totally misinformed.

They have 800 "experts" on a petition, you say? The American Society of Civil Engineers has 141,000 members. The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (materials scientists who are experts in the behavior of metals and other materials) has another 10,000 who can tell you exactly what to expect from a piece of steel when it gets hot under a load. Seriously, there is no debate here among anyone who actually knows what they're talking about. Go look up a REAL scientific, peer-reviewed journal and see what it says, not the tripe published by the "Journal of 9/11 Research" (which was only started when the publishers realized that real journals won't accept papers that are based on faulty science).

Interesting article. I think that it is always valid to ask questions that challenge a widely held supposition.

I am impressed with the many blog responses and the visceral dialog. This goes to our continued collective dismay and disillusionment about "what really happened" on that tragic morning, not only in New York, but also in Pennsylvania and DC, (lest we forget the full extent of the attack upon humanity and the globally tainted American image).

What was not discussed in the article, or in any of the blog entries, is "What does it all mean?" If thermites or super-thermites, or nano thermites were present, what does this really suggest? Who do we point the finger at now? Was it "us" or "them"? We will probably never know.

I agree that no one really knows what happens at the highest level of "government" in the US and around the globe, and that dark forces probably move invisibly throughout the world to garner power and control. I do not doubt that these agents-against-the-world exist everywhere, and that it is logical to deduce that the highest concentration of these specters would be seated in the most powerful bodies of government and finance on the planet... ours.

So what are YOU going to do about it? Argue over the veracity of discrete evidence? Spin on conspiracy? Do you suppose that you will ever come to a consent conclusion? Doubt it.

So again, what's the point? Seems like so much thought and energy wasted on subterfuge and divisiveness.

Maybe, in the long view of these horrible events, that was the real goal. To divide a nation from within, to polarize opinions to the point that we, as THE leading world economic and military power, might collapse from within, just like the WTC did on 9/11. Seems like we're heading that way, doesn't it? Better break out those tin-foil hats.

Who do you think will win in the end? Those that rule and control through hate and fear? Those who argue and debate themselves into the abyss of hate and fear? Or those who leave the backward-looking chatter behind and move forward with trust, hope and faith in the underlying nature of all good people?

We seem to have lost the notion that we can only survive by stepping back, in the moment, to take a full view of the human condition from a broad perspective and then working together to serve each other and all.

Isn't that how this is supposed to work?

PS: Kratatoa: I didn't just sign up yesterday.... point your "clue" somewhere else. And JohnLocke: one IP, one voice.

Households like mine where one computer is shared by many would map many users to a single IP address. I believe that a household with many PC's using a router with NAT (pretty common these days) will also look like a single IP address to the outside world (e.g. the Indy).

I thought that the Santa Barbara Independant was a fact based news source. Judging by this article I am having my doubts. Mr. Griffin is a wise man that has bought into this fantasy of a 911 government conspiracy. The fact that his group of kooks also includes Holocaust deniers show the intellectual dishonesty of his theories. I feel sorry for David. The idea that modern buildings cannot be brought down by fire is wrong. In February of this year a brand new luxury hotel in Bejing, built with the latest technology, was destroyed and almost toppled by a FIREWORKS SHOW. When will the Indy start covering alien abductions or trying to get the facts straight on the JFK assasination? Is Tupac or Elvis really dead?

EastBeach you're right about NAT. Nevertheless, narrowing the source to a household is a still useful. It indicates that many posts in different names are coming from one place. One or two names? No prob. 45 names? Very interesting.

There are 6 members of this household which share the same IP, with multiple laptop computers on a wifi network. I voted in the poll, but none of the other 5 members of the household were able to vote from here, as the poll (obviously) allows one vote per IP address. It works both ways, nobody has the advantage here.

Before the trolls come out from under their rocks, yes, I am a new poster here. I am a member of AE 911 Truth. I would like to set Mr. Greenspan straight on a couple things. Regarding the Beijing Mandarin Oriental Hotel fire, the Institution of Structural Engineers had this to say:

"The recent severe fire at the Beijing Mandarin Oriental Hotel is a dramatic example of the resilience of high-rise, steel framed structures when subjected to even the most intense infernos.

"The structure of the TVCC tower - like that of its dominant sibling, the spectacular 238-metre China Central Television (CCTV) tower to the south in Beijing's fast developing central business district - is radical in design and immensely strong. Both buildings are built to withstand major earthquakes while using far less steel than conventional skyscrapers. It is this radical structure that gives the towers their irregular, and challenging, look, and at the same time makes them immensely strong and stable."

Interestingly, similar words have been used to describe the twin towers, the design of which, while radical at the time, was adopted across the world due to its strength, economy and optimal use of floor space.

Another quote:

"In contrast, three high rise structures collapsed due to fire on 9/11/01. WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7 collapsed due to fires generating a fraction of the heat occurring in the Beijing fire. WTC7 in particular collapsed at virtual free-fall speed into its own footprint although it was not struck by any aircraft. After eight years, and two contradictory investigative reports, we are now being asked to believe this was due to thermal expansion causing longitudinal strain (but not sagging) of a beam, causing a connection to fail, leaving a column unrestrained and ... boom, complete collapse.

"Visual evidence from real fires is giving an entirely different picture of how buildings behave."

In fact, Mr. Greenspan, the hotel was NOT "destroyed and almost toppled". It remained standing perfectly upright, with no structural failure whatsoever. Perhaps you are unaware that the unique design of the hotel had a 'crimp' in the side. Photos of the aftermath of the fire may make it appear that the building was crumpling, but I assure you this was inherent in the design.

Your comment that "the idea that modern buildings cannot be brought down by fire is wrong" is in err. No steel-framed structure, other than the twin towers and WTC 7, has ever "collapsed" completely due to fire, in the 100-year history of steel framed structures.

I suggest you review this survey commissioned by NIST. Interestingly, of the 6 structural steel buildings listed in the survey, 4 of those were involved in 9/11. You will find that in the survey, six collapses occurred in buildings over 20 stories, and three of these were the WTC steel-framed buildings (1, 2, and 7).

Only these three were TOTAL collapses, and these three were the ONLY steel-framed of ALL buildings surveyed that totally collapsed.

Furthermore, another example of a longer-lasting and more intense fire with no complete collapse is the Edificio Windsor Fire, Madrid, Spain on Feb 13, 2005, which lasted 20 hours at 100 times more heat output than the fire in the South Tower WTC on 9/11. Every single glass window was destroyed which is an indication of the fury of this fire with unlimited ventilation and adiabatic fire temperatures of at least 1260 degrees C. You can find photos of this inferno online; nothing like this conflagration was seen in any of the WTC buildings. The building sustained a partial collapse of unprotected steel above the 17th floor. It was in the process of being fireproofed and the only portion that failed was completely unprotected. Compare this to WTC 7, a building with minor pockets of fire in a fully fire-proofed structure. I might add, never before in the history of steel skyscrapers has one collapsed at or near or even remotely near freefall. The partial collapse of the Windsor occurred over a period of 3 hours. This is the expected reaction of steel when faced with hours and hours of high temperatures, as steel acts as a heat sink and only gradually begins to deform once the heat has been distributed evenly throughout.

Please, Mr. Greenspan, get your facts straight first to avoid disseminating disinformation. I'm sure that was not your intent.

Webadmin: Blogulator mentioned names vs. IPs re voting in a poll and you confirmed one IP/one voice. Do you apply the same filter to all postings that are responding to articles or just to poll responses?

I don't think webadmin cares... they see this as the most trafficked story on the site are are likely pleased with that. The fact that the Independent has stopped as low as this and published such an article passing itself off as "NEWS" somehow... should really come as no surprise either... but I was hoping there was some integrity left... silly me.

Kratatoa (did you mean Krakatoa?), judging from your posts, you have nothing to say. So why do you keep saying it? Try posting an intelligent response to the subject matter. Blueprint for Truth is available to watch for free online at ae911truth.org. May I suggest you watch it and then come back here with a rebuttal? You might also check out http://patriotsquestion911.com/, where you will find 200+ Senior Military, Intelligence Service, Law Enforcement, and Government Officials 700+ Engineers and Architects 200+ Pilots and Aviation Professionals 400+ Professors Question 9/11 230+ 9/11 Survivors and Family Members 200+ Artists, Entertainers, and Media Professionals who all question the official story.

Tegrat commented, "The idea that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled demolition simply does not stand up to one fact: keeping such a project secret is not possible."

Have you forgotten about the Manhattan Project? Operation Gladio? There have been a few whistleblowers, but they have been gagged (Sibel Edmonds) or ignored, esp. by MSM. Why would anyone involved in this terrorist act admit involvement? In operations such as this, everything is compartmentalized; most involved probably didn't realize their role until after the fact, if at all. People have been silenced with death or threat of death, threats to family and job. Others have been promoted and honored for their 'loyalty'.

Just out of curiosity, I wonder how many here have read all of PNAC's documents (Project for a New American Century).

Great regarding the polls, but I'm still skeptical regarding "deduplicating" other comments. As Kratatoa said: "Mechanisms such as ... ?"

I'm not nitpicking here - the issue of multiple postings has long bothered many folks as has been repeatedly expressed in the Indy as well as other blogs. Unconstrained ability to post under multiple names seriously weakens the credibility of the medium. Some assurance that the issue is at least somewhat under control would be great. The polls are a start...

John Locke, you strike me as paranoid. Why would someone need to make up multiple IDs to post comments here? It's just a local newspaper, for Pete's sake. A comment is a comment. Why don't you have anything to say about the actual content of the article?

To L Burik. If you are one who only posts under one id, then good for you. But there are many who post under multiple names here and in other blogs in order to indicate more support for their views. And if you actually read the posts, you'd see that I did comment on the article, which reminds me of an old country song that claimed Kennedy was assassinated by descendents of those who assassinated Lincoln by virtue of a bunch if pseudoscientific irrelevant goop. To the point of anonymous multiple postings: there are lots of claims of scientific and engineering expertise in this blog - since they are all anonymous they contribute exactly nothing IMO to a real fact-based cause and effect discussion. But the wording in several sound like the same person posing as more than one.

"[T]he broad masses of a nation...more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes." --Adolf Hitler

Here's what one Santa Barbara native and current resident, who has a degree in Mechanical (Aeronautical) Engineering from Cal Poly, has assembled regarding 9/11:

This seems to follow some of what we have learned about the US' relationship with OBL, reported all over the world, and even in some of the US mainstream corporate "weasel-media" outlets:* Osama bin Laden was reportedly visited by CIA station chief Larry Mitchell and others in hospital in Dubai, June 2001. The visit lasted several hours, yet OBL was not detained despite being wanted in connection with the US Embassy bombings in Africa.* On the night of 9/10/2001, OBL was reported by CBS news to be in hospital at a joint US/Pakistani military/intelligence facility in Rawalpindi, which submits daily reports to Washington DC.* The Bush Administration instructed the special bin Laden unit to "lay off" prior to 9/11.* Osama bin Laden escaped after being surrounded and pinned down by US troops on 4 occasions in the Afghan mountains... (it is hard to acknowledge that the "principle quarry" could have gotten away once, let alone 4 times from the world's most well equipped military; yet another wild and unlikely coincidence).* Several of OBL's relatives were allowed to leave the US in the days following 9/11, without being questioned by the FBI...* Two quotes from George W. Bush: "I am not particularly interested in Osama bin Laden", and "I am not really worried by Osama bin Laden".* "Bin Laden Issue Station" disbanded by CIA in 2005. (he's dead?)* FBI: We have no hard evidence linking (OBL) with the crimes of 9/11.* The "smoking gun confession" videotape "found by US marines in Jalalabad, Afghanistan which the Bush Administration used to justify the war in Afghanistan was both faked and mistranslated, and has been thoroughly debunked.* There has been a $25,000,000 reward on OBL, dead or alive, since late 2001. No takers.

It sounds very much as if OBL, the man used by the media as the great big boogeyman to scare the public and "justify" the so-called "war on terrorism" has a rather different relationship with the US than what has been sold to us.

LBurik,You truthers need some common sense. This assertion that "no steel structure has ever collapsed due to fire" has nothing to do with a fire started by a 450,000 pound airplane full of avaition fuel crashing into a structure at hundreds of miles per hour. I hate to go all Issac Newton on you, but Force equals mass times acceleration. The planes that hit the two towers did so with incredible force. That alone would have severly damaged critical structural elements of the building. Each of those planes carried 24,000 gallons of fuel and they were almost full (that is why they hijacked planes going to the west coast). The fire generated by that much fuel is unlike any other fire in a high rise building. We are not talking about an office trash can fire or faulty wiring. On a larger level, what puzzles me about the Truther position is what possible motivation would the government have in rigging up explosives in the buildings? The most damaging fact of 911 to the truthers is the fact that two airliners did crash into the twin towers. Thousands of people saw the crashes. The "evil forces" in the government would have had their casus belli with just the crashes. Why would they jeopardize their "false flag" operation with the huge risk involved with wiring the building with explosives? The truther movement, after eight years, has yet to come up with ONE SHREAD OF EVIDENCE that there was a US Government conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Center. As for now, you are in the same category as Bigfoot and Loch Ness Monster hunters. Finally,I am still shocked that my favorite local newspaper, The Santa Barbara Independent, would have this article, that makes the outrageous claim that there is some real doubt as to the perpetrators of 911, on the cover. But hey it helps sell advertising and why let common sense and truth stand in the way of making a buck.. Why stop here Indy? I am sure that you can sell more advertising with the well know controversy as to the real place of President Obama's birth,

Follow up:The breathless statement opens up this sensational article, "One of the crucial technical disputes in American history, perhaps second only to global warming, is underway. " I just have to laugh or I will start to cry. There is no credible doubt as to global warming just as there is no credible doubt as to what happened on 911. This entire article is so much self gratification for the tinfoil hat crowd. But hey, if it feels good do it!

Herschel et al sound like the local contingent of the "stand there in denial with their fingers in their ears while stamping their feet, yelling... I don't want to hear about it" set. Their main tactic is to evade the point, conflate the issue with irrelevances, and invoke name-calling.

Questioning and open-minded inquiry is a principle hallmark of a free society. These folk appear to be more comfortable led by the nose while displaying *blind faith* in authority. They are also raising a single finger at the dead and their loved ones. A pathetic, infantile, and singularly unAmerican attitude.

Bloggulator,Yes it is a free society. You, Griffin and the rest of the truthers are free to believe any half baked ideas that come into your parinoid heads. But your obsession with these beliefs, that have no basis in fact or logic, do nothing to benefit the victims of 911. I am not one of the "I don't want to hear it set". I want to hear a factual argument as to the motive and means of the purported "911 conspiracy". Do you have one? ( sound of crickets chirping)

"The truther movement, after eight years, has yet to come up with ONE SHREAD OF EVIDENCE that there was a US Government conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Center . . ."

(by the way, that would be "SHRED")

I am underwhelmed by your claims, Mr. Greenspan. First of all the "truthers" do not, as a complete group, claim there is a government conspiracy. The "truthers" claim that the "official" story does not explain the known facts of that day, as evidenced by videos, samples, interviews, etc. The 'truthers" have built a huge body of evidence to refute the official story. If you don't know this, then you should probably do something about your ignorance in the matter before mouthing off nasty comments about them. Free country, or not, it's utterly non-productive to keep mouthing off individual claims if you can't back them up. It is, in fact, irritating.

Herschel, there you go again. In your self-righteous obsession to launch ad hominems at people with whom you disagree, you try to conflate "touting an explanation" with "posing a question". Perhaps the nature of Truthers' questions is what prompts you to blow fuses and get in such a tizzy. Maybe it is because you have no acceptable answers? Perhaps you are annoyed that people dare ask questions in the first place? Perhaps you feel that asking "unapproved" questions is wrong? Perhaps you're angry that 9/11truth seekers are not "'good enough Germans', who fail to conform with the orthodoxy of authority's pronouncements"?

By extension, maybe your comfort zone is ruffled by the possibility that potential evidence to be unearthed by those pesky questions might lead to people outside of the ethnic/racial/religious group that it has become fashionable (and tacitly approved) throughout a large section of American society to *hate* over the last few decades: arabs/middle easterners/muslims.

Notice that throughout this entire discussion, I have not pointed the finger at any one party; perhaps that is my crime in your eyes, and you are aware that "accusing me of being a conspiracy theorist by expressing the need for a proper investigation" cuts no ice? The people who point the finger of blame have consistently been those *not* wanting to know the whole truth about 9/11. With so many fatal flaws and demonstrable lies in the official version of events, it should be a mandatory task to investigate, with the utmost scientific and logical rigor, how it happened, and in the process find out once and for all time *everyone* responsible,including those who were accessory before and/or after the fact.

>>>> I am not one of the "I don't want to hear it set". I want to hear a factual argument as to the motive and means of the purported "911 conspiracy". Do you have one? ( sound of crickets chirping) <<<<

So, Herschel, what would you say if I "put forward a factual argument as to the motive and means of the purported 9/11 conspiracy"? I could quote you a thousand illogical actions by the government, inconsistencies, wild coincidences, impossibilities, stories that "don't compute", and stories which changed several times when inconvenient facts got in the way.

Regarding motivation, I could quote you a smorgasbord of motivating factors that do fail to point to the parties which you are so comfortable in blaming.

Regarding precedent, I could quote you perhaps a dozen false flag events (and variations on that tactic) of recent decades, in which elements within the US Government have been involved.

But how would you react to my answers to your request? Utterly and monotonously predictably: you would accuse me of being a conspiracy theorist!!! LOL You *are* most certainly one of the "don't want to hear about it" set.... that is unless you want to take part in a rational discussion of the facts, and quit the pavlovian and puerile "tinfoil hat" accusations/reactions you have exhibited to date.

However, you need to stop thinking small. While we're pointing out all the holes in the "official story," let's revisit the greatest conspiracy of all -- this whole "the earth is round" thing. This story is so manifestly false as to be absurd. A homeless man at a bus stop pointed out that if the earth were in fact round, all the people in Australia would fall into the sun.

The fact that the sheeple still believe we live on a so-called "globe" astounds me. Let's team up and expose the truth once and for all!

Thanks for the article... it's gratifying to see that this subject is registering on this country's consciousness and conscience at last.

As a technical point, the statement "Adding silicon, magnesium, or titanium makes it thermate, also known as nano-thermite or "super-thermite," a substance with an accelerated capacity to cut through steel." is incorrect. The terms thermate and nano-thermite are not synonymous. Nano-thermite (AKA super-thermite) is a material that comprises components refined to the nanometer (i.e. billionth of a meter) scale. When these ultra-fine particles are mixed uniformly, thermite is elevated from an incendiary to an explosive. For more information see the paper Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe athttp://tinyurl.com/de6448

BTW, here's a video that may help convince those who subscribe to the 'official conspiracy theory' that it's safe to come out from under their beds:http://tinyurl.com/ycjn5y3

LOL. The latest issue of the Indy printed 2 letters thanking them for running this story, and no letters wondering WTF was going on. They also didn't print any of the critical comments from this web page.

The truthers that are posting here at the Indy are even more pathetic than the usual variety. I am not the one making the extraordinary claim that someone with some agenda used the one of world's most exotic explosive, thermite, to level two buildings that had aready been impacted by large jetliners full of aviation fuel. That is the assertion made by Mr. Griffin and his followers. The burden of proof is with those making the claim. Aside from all of the junk science you truthers are pushing here, I simply asked the question why would someone go to all of the trouble to blow up two buildings that were already damaged beyond repair with great loss of life. Two days later not one of you people making these claims has come up with a possible motive for the "controlled demolition" of the twin towers. This is yet more proof of the poverty of your ideas.

Herschel says, "I am not the one making the extraordinary claim that someone with some agenda used the one of world's most exotic explosive, thermite, to level two buildings that had already been impacted by large jetliners full of aviation fuel."

There's a saying that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Here it is in the peer-reviewed paper 'Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe'http://tinyurl.com/de6448

Herschel also says, "I simply asked the question why would someone go to all of the trouble to blow up two buildings that were already damaged beyond repair with great loss of life."

RusselG,You still could not come up with your own ideas, just links to the 911 truther blogs. Come on man, what is so hard with coming up with a reason why anyone or any organization would blow up buildings that were already well on their way to destruction with great loss of life. The neo-cons already had their justification for war, why the overkill? Just make something up like you truthers usually do. Oh and "peer reviewed" is a very flexible term.

Well actually Herschel, I didn't supply "links to the 911 truther blogs"; I gave you a link to a paper published in the Bentham Open Journal that establishes the presence of active thermitic material in dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center catastrophe. What, aside from the fact that you haven't read it, is your problem with this research? Here's the link again.http://tinyurl.com/de6448

The second link I provided is to a film called 'Terrorstorm: A History of Government Sponsored Terrorism'. In the first year that this important film was on the Web it received some 7,000,00 hits. But evidently you didn't even click the link, much less watch it. Here it is again:http://tinyurl.com/y8qu7ny

As for your statement "You still could not come up with your own ideas...", how absurd, indeed, pathetic is that, coming from you who seems to 'know' only from what the mainstream media have told you about these events...

There is much evidence of which you are unaware; clearly, you don't even know how little you know. At this point, you aren't yet able to hold up your end of this discussion. If you will actually click on the links, view the material, and make a comment that demonstrates that you have the ability to understand the relevance of this information, we can take it from there.

RussellG, All of these days later not one truther has come forward to explain why someone would plant and detonate explosives in two buildings that were already destroyed. Some time ago, I viewed the source material you pasted in your post. I find them interesting, but they do nothing to prove that the attacks on 911 were carried out by anyone other than OBL and his organization. > For sometime before 911 OBL made clear statements that he had declared a holy war aginst the US and its allies. The main reasons he gave was the presence of US troops in S.A., the site of Islam's holy sites and the U.S.'s support of Israel. In pursut of this war, his organization in 1993 detonated a massive bomb underneath the WTC in an attempt to destroy Twin Towers (the same Towers that his organization took down on 911). They then went on to bomb the US embassy in Nairobi Kenya and the USS Cole in Yemen. One may ask, what were the reasons behind these attacks? Clearly, they had the objective that every military or militant group has had from the dawn of time, to force a battle at the time and place of ones choosing. Those attacks were carried out when Clinton was President and aside from shooting some cruise missles at OBL's then patrons in the Sudan he took a law enforcement approach to the terrorist attacks. That was and is the best way to deal with criminals like Al-Qaeda. > When Bush was elected, OBL sensed an opportunity to try to defeat his enemy, The U.S.. Clearly, the only way he could win would be to get the US and its allies to fight his forces in a guerrilla war at the place of his choosing, Afganistan. It is no coincidence that on the same day as 911, his agents killed the leader of the Taliban's greatist internal enemy the Northern Alliance. The attacks of 911 on the WTC, Pentagon and Washington were designed to provoke the US into invading Afganistan, the place that OBL selected for his battle. This was the same place that the USSR met its greatist defeat and was to cause their destruction. The bonus for OBL was that Bush, with exterene hubris, thought that he could settle a score with Iraq using the American people's outrage with the 911 attacks as justification. Now eight years later, the US is stuck in the quick sand of Iraq and Afganistan. It will take years for us to really know the damage that these two ongoing conflicts has done to our great nation. For now OBL, if he is still alive, have acheived his goal beyond his wildest expectations. The US is bloodied and broke stuck in two conflicts in unfriendly countries with no end in sight. He has enflamed hatred for America in hundreds of thousands in the Muslim world thereby assuring a vast supply of new recruits to his cause.

>The basis for the truther movement has many similarities with the equally insane notion that appeared after Pearl Harbor, that somehow the US knew about the Japanese attack and let it happen in order to get the US into WW2. The basis for these ideas is that the Japanese of the time could not carry out such a devistating attack all on their own. The 911 C/T types have the same crap idea about OBl and his organization. Underestimate your enemy and you are setting yourself up for a disaster.>My issue with the truther movementaside fron its poverty of clear ideas, is that it is a complete distraction from the real issues of what happened on 911. The 911 report was flawed in that it did not go far enough in tracking the source of funds for the OBL group. That cover up was to keep the masses from realizing that, although OBL is a persona non grata in Saudi Arabia and a pariah to his family, significant support for his war on the west was provided from powerful elements in that kingdom. the 911 report also glossed over the massive failure by the FBI, CIA and NSA to coordinate their efforts to stop this disaster. And finally it distracts from the painfull truth that OBL played "Rope a Dope" with the Bush Administration and won.

Re the first post of your last two, you've constructed what is, prima facie, a plausible scenario... insofar at least that it is based on what you've seen and heard in mainstream media. However, many of your 'facts' are in error.

First, you want an explanation at to "why someone would plant and detonate explosives in two buildings that were already destroyed." Towers 1 and 2 were not "destroyed" by the airplanes' impact: they both withstood it, exactly as they were designed to do. And the smoldering, residual fires were not nearly hot enough to severely weaken their massive steel frameworks. If in fact the buildings had not been, as they were, demolished by explosives, the fires would have abated and the wreckage of the planes could have been retrieved and examined. This would have then revealed that the planes that hit the towers were not the planes that left Boston. The proof is in just one of many videos and stills that show the strange 'pod' on the fuselage of the plane that hit WTC2:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TLw0T...That was not Flight 175. It was a remote-controlled aircraft. Both of the planes that left Boston went off radar for a while and that's when they were switched. As for the notion that the planes impact alone brought down the towers, some basic physics refutes that. E.g.,:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtx_Gc...

Moreover, when you consider the first attack on the WTC complex, factor this info from THE NEW YORK TIMES into your appraisal:

Thursday October 28, 1993 Page A1

"Tapes Depict Proposal to ThwartBomb Used in Trade Center Blast"

By Ralph Blumenthal

Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.

The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad Salem, should be used, the informer said...........More athttp://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTI...

That said, what do you make of the paper demonstrating that active thermitic material pervades the dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center?http://tinyurl.com/de6448With which scenario does it best conform?

You appear to not understand the crucial flaws in the arguments put forward by the "round earthers." Consider this:

The impossibilities of holding unsecured objects in place on a curved surface

1) Staying on top

Once again, picture in your mind a round world. Now imagine that there are two people on this world, one at each pole. For the person at the top of the world, (the North Pole), gravity is pulling him down, towards the South Pole. But for the person at the South Pole, shouldn't gravity pull him down as well? What keeps our person at the South Pole from falling completely off the face of the "globe"?

2) Falling off

As we begin to make this argument, we acknowledge beforehand that we are aware of the property of matter known as friction. Yes, we realize that whenever two surfaces are held together by any force there will be a static frictional force that will resist any motion by either surface in any direction other than parallel to the force. The example we are using is an extreme situation, and would involve the object in question to travel a considerable distance (tens of degrees of latitude) from the "top" of the planet.

Using the "round Earth" theory, setting an object on the earth would be like setting grains of sand on a beach ball. Certainly a few grains would stay - right around the top, the surface is nearly horizontal - but when you stray too far from the absolute top of the ball, the grains of sand start sliding off and falling onto the ground. The Earth, if round, should behave in exactly the same fashion. Because the top is a very localized region on a sphere, if the Earth were in fact round, there would be only a very small area of land that would be at all inhabitable. Stray to the outside fringes of the "safe zone", and you start walking at a tilt. The further out you go, the more you slant, until your very survival is determined by the tread on your boots. Reach a certain point, and you slide off the face of the planet entirely. Obviously, something is wrong.

In order to avoid the aforementioned scenario, (which obviously is inaccurate, as you very rarely hear of people falling off the face of the planet) we are forced to assume that, in the "round Earth" theory, there would be a gravitational field radiating from the center of the planet. All objects, be they rocks, insects, humans, or other planets would have, under Efimovich's theory, have a gravitational "charge" that would, under a certain alignment, cause them to be attracted to the center of the Earth. Unfortunately, like a magnet in a stronger magnetic field, it would undoubtedly require a long time to re-align an object's gravitational charge, were this the case. And so we go to argument four, which deals with difficulties in having different "downs" for different people.

Russell says, "It's clearly off the subject and if you are currently being treated for your ADD then you are clearly off your meds...

But, hey, since you're so into the events of 9/11 and trying so hard to play, let me lob an easy one to you. Question: How did Flight 77, a Boeing 757, disappear through, vanish with virtually no trace into, a 20x20 foot hole in the Pentagon's west wall?

Sure. Now imagine, if only for the sake of argument, that the person on top and the person on bottom can both manage to remain attracted to the ground "below" them. What would happen if the person on one side decided to visit the other? Since the man at the North Pole has a different idea of what is down and up (and in fact experiences an opposite pull from the Earth's gravity) than the person at the South Pole does, when the denizen of the frozen Arctic visits his Antarctic counterpart, they will experience gravitational pulls exactly opposite of each other! The human from the North Pole will "fall up", never returning to the ground, and will continue falling forever into the deep void of outer space!

Looking at the feasibility of Efimovich's teachings cannot remain limited to examining small, solid objects such as human beings. A true analysis of his work must incorporate natural phenomena and how their existence is either explained or made difficult by each of the theories. In the next argument against the "round-Earth" theory, we will be analyzing the existence of two extremely commonplace (yet altogether unfeasible under the ramifications of having a round planet) non-solids: the atmosphere and the oceans.

RussellG,You still have not come up with a possible motive for someone putting explosives in the WTC. The wackiness of your posts increases by the day. For example,"That was not Flight 175. It was a remote-controlled aircraft." I cannot wait for the missle with hologram theory to pop up.>Thousands of engineers and scientists know that the planes did destroy the towers. Only a few hundred cranks hold your conception of "basic physics". I am sure I can find a few hundred doctors that believe that smoking is not a health hazard.>You cannot escape the fact that OBL's group did try to destroy the WTC in 1993. The fact that the FBI dropped the ball means nothing>Your only proof of OBL being a CIA agent is one pissed off ex government employee. Weak. >As for this, "How did Flight 77, a Boeing 757, disappear through, vanish with virtually no trace into, a 20x20 foot hole in the Pentagon's west wall?" This is complete crap. Why would you think that an almost half a million pound jetliner flying hundreds of miles per hour make a cartoon like cut out in a concrete and steel building? There were thousands of items of debris recovered from the Pentagon including jet engine parts, seats and human dna from the passengers. Hundreds of people reported seeing a jetline crash into the building. A security camera at a gas station recorded the plane milliseconds before impact. Thank you for the softball and letting me hit it over the fence. While I am at it I will crush some more of the truther myths that you hold near and dear.>"911 was a false flag operation" History shows up that these types of operations are always carried out against insignificant targets. The WTC was the center of finance in the US, there is no way that any American dark group entity would sacrifice such a vital structure.>One truther here used the Manhattan Project as proof that the US Government can keep a program secret. This is yet another myth. Almost as soon as it started, the Soviet Union knew about it and was receiving updates from spies. Nothing as bold as the conspiracy proposed by the truthers could possibly be kept a secret. Any of the wild theories you propose would involve hundreds if not thousands of individuals, but eight years later not a wisper.>This takes us to the mother of all truther myths. "active thermitic material pervades the dust from the 9/11" really? show me the chain of custody of the dust that was tested. Show me the methodology used. Finally prove to me that this thermatic material was not created by the tens of thousands of computers, telephones, printers, fax machines, cell phones, electrical wiring, insulation and other items that were burning for hours and then days after the tower's collapse.

Herschel says, "You still have not come up with a possible motive for someone putting explosives in the WTC."

Russell says: Did you ever hear of PNAC, 'The Project for the New American Century'? Evidently not... The group, formed in1997, included Dick Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld, John R. Bolton, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz and others of the neocon ilk. PNAC's policy document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," openly advocates for total global military domination. While the group devoted inordinate attention to Iraq, its most general focus was on a need to "re-arm America." How to promote this when US citizens are expecting an extended payout of the 'peace dividend' after a long Cold War was the question, and PNAC had that figured out: Section V of Rebuilding America's Defenses, entitled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force", includes the sentence: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing eventlike a new Pearl Harbor"

Do you get it Herschel... can you connect the dots? Here's another clue: On the night of 9/11/'01 George Bush noted in his diary, "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today."

Herschel says, "Thousands of engineers and scientists know that the planes did destroy the towers. Only a few hundred cranks hold your conception of "basic physics"

Russell says: You seem convinced that if you continue to parrot falsehoods, they will be eventually accepted as fact... but the lies have become very tired now, and more and more people are demanding real answers. E.g.,

http://www.ae911truth.org/where 885 architectural and engineering professionals and 4775 other supporters including A&E students have signed the petition demanding of Congress a truly independent investigation. Richard Gage founded Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth about two years ago; he now tours North America and Europe presenting his detailed and compelling case that all three towers were brought down by controlled demolitions. Also see

http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/This is the Patriots for 9/11 Truth website where 200+ Senior Military, Intelligence Service, Law Enforcement, and Government Officials, 200+ Pilots and Aviation Professionals, 400+ Professors, 230+ 9/11 Survivors and Family Members and other groups and individuals question the official story. The official story is, as becomes more obvious every day, "Terribly Flawed," "Laced with Contradictions," "a Joke," "a Cover-up" "Impossible", "A Bunch of Hogwash", "Total B.S.", "Ludicrous", "A Well-Organized Cover-up", "A White-Washed Farce"

(I wrote a long reply, to discover that I'm limited to 3000 characters, so I'll have to post it in sections)

Al Qaeda was created by the CIA, in their offices in Washington D.C., According to Richard Clark in his most recent book. It was created for Saudi Arabia to bankroll Osama bin Laden, through the House of Saud, "in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union during the 1980's and Riyadh and Washington together contributed an estimated $3.5 billion to the mujahideen."

"In late 2003, U.S. News & World Report conducted an exhaustive study titled. 'The Saudi Connection.' Its findings included the following."

"The evidence was indisputable: Saudi Arabia, America's longtime ally and the world's largest oil producer, had somehow become, as a senior Treasury Department official put it, 'the epicenter' of terrorist financing'..............."In October 2003, Vanity Fair magazine disclosed information that had not previously been made public, in an in-depth report entitled 'Saving the Saudis.' The story that emerged about the relationship between the Bush family, the House of Saud, and the bin Laden family" (outlined) relationships that went back at least to the time of the Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair which began in 1974, and to George H.W. Bush's terms as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (1971-1973) and then as head of the CIA (1976-1977).

"Vanity Fair concluded: The Bush family and the House of Saud, the two most powerful dynasties in the world, have had closed personal business, and political ties for more than 20 years'................As the bin Ladens are long-standing friends of the Bush family, it's just the usual nepotism that Osama became it's leader. What we need now, to refute Sibel Edmonds' contention, is for the CIA to show us Osama's termination notice.

Herschel says, "Thank you for the softball and letting me hit it over the fence."

Russell says: Dude, you whiffed it... you struck out again. E.g., your question "Why would you think that an almost half a million pound jetliner flying hundreds of miles per hour make a cartoon like cut out in a concrete and steel building?" Oy vey... Well you see, Herschel, there were other planes that hit buildings on 9/11... like, for example, the one that hit the concrete and steel WTC1... did you hear about that? Look it up and see for yourself what sort of hole that impact made... And this: "There were thousands of items of debris recovered from the Pentagon including jet engine parts, seats and human dna from the passengers." Nonsense. Virtually the only aircraft debris was ONE engine, and the photographs show that it doesn't match those of a Boeing 757. Oh, there was a flight data recorder they claim was recovered at the scene, and after a long fight, the data was made public under the Freedom of Information Act. But the info from the black box shows that the plane must have overflown the Pentagon; else it would have had to make a very steep descent to hit it. See the Pandora's Black Box video on the Pilots For 9/11 Truth website athttp://pilotsfor911truth.org/or in four parts athttp://tinyurl.com/y8semqt

Also, here's testimony from Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, Pentagon employee and eyewitness to the events at the Pentagon on 9/11.

"There was a dearth of visible debris on the relatively unmarked [Pentagon] lawn, where I stood only minutes after the impact. Beyond this strange absence of airliner debris, there was no sign of the kind of damage to the Pentagon structure one would expect from the impact of a large airliner. This visible evidence or lack thereof may also have been apparent to the secretary of defense [Donald Rumsfeld], who in an unfortunate slip of the tongue referred to the aircraft that slammed into the Pentagon as a "missile". ...

I saw nothing of significance at the point of impact - no airplane metal or cargo debris was blowing on the lawn in front of the damaged building as smoke billowed from within the Pentagon. ... all of us staring at the Pentagon that morning were indeed looking for such debris, but what we expected to see was not evident.

The same is true with regard to the kind of damage we expected. ... But I did not see this kind of damage. Rather, the facade had a rather small hole, no larger than 20 feet in diameter. Although this facade later collapsed, it remained standing for 30 or 40 minutes, with the roofline remaining relatively straight.

The scene, in short, was not what I would have expected from a strike by a large jetliner. It was, however, exactly what one would expect if a missile had struck the Pentagon. ...

You say, "Hundreds of people reported seeing a jetliner crash into the building." but it's not true. A few people saw a large plane approach the Pentagon, but I've yet to hear a first person account of the collision.

You say, "A security camera at a gas station recorded the plane milliseconds before impact." BS: you can't provide a link to any footage showing a plane hitting that building. Save for the few inconclusive frames that were eventually released, the tapes from every camera that might have captured the events at the west wall have been seized and kept from the public, even in the face of FOIA suits.

Like I say, you swung wildly at everything and whiffed. But, hey, you tried so hard that I'll give you another turn at bat here... but I'm not making concessions to your ineptitude at this point, so it's not a lob.

2) The next day, an hour after a plane hit WTC1, an errant jet lumbers southward through the most heavily protected airspace on the planet, straight toward the headquarters of the mightiest military on Earth. Even though the nearby Andrews Air Force base normally has two squadrons of fighters on alert, none are sent up to intercept the plane. It now has only to dive straight into the Pentagon to wipe out Rumsfeld and most of the upper echelons of the military command; but, inexplicably, it swings left and executes a tight, aerobatic, 270 degree turn that brings it around to the west wall.

3) The section of the Pentagon called the 'West Wall' had been undergoing reinforcement and remodeling for about two years. Most of the tenants, including the Marines, had long since been relocated to other offices. But some remained...

Question: What were the duties of most of those still working in the section of the Pentagon that was so severely damaged on 9/11/'01?

Can you understand the question? Do you want to take a swing?

Herschel says, "The WTC was the center of finance in the US, there is no way that any American dark group entity would sacrifice such a vital structure."

Russell says: Just for starters, WTC7 housed offices of the Security and Exchange Commission, along with those of other government agencies. Remember WTC7? I only heard about it a few years back, and to this day there are those who are unaware of its destruction. Why would WTC7 be marked for demolition? Maybe that the records for SEC cases against some well-connected players in finance and other related realms were destroyed has something to do with it...

Herschel says, "Any of the wild theories you propose would involve hundreds if not thousands of individuals, but eight years later not a wisper."

Russell says: Who are you going to turn to in such a situation... the government? Check out the story of Kurt Sonnenfeld, the FEMA photographer who now lives in exile in Argentina:http://www.voltairenet.org/article160...

Herschel says, "Finally prove to me that this thermatic material was not created by the tens of thousands of computers, telephones, printers, fax machines, cell phones, electrical wiring, insulation and other items that were burning for hours and then days after the tower's collapse."

Russell says: What an absurd comment... have you no understanding of how basic chemistry and chemical manufacturing works? Aside from the fact that the components of all of the items you list above have little if anything in common with thermite/thermate, nano-thermite requires extremely sophisticated equipment and techniques for its fabrication. By your reasoning, you could throw a hand grenade in a hardware store and expect iPods and Blackberrys to fly out...

But in spite of the fact you've offered so much erroneous information here Herschel, thanks for playing. The more that discussions such as these are conducted, the more the awareness of the various issues is raised.

RusselG,Watching you truthers spin your insane ideas is excellent entertainment. It is almost as much fun as jousting with the Ron Paultards. No matter how you spin the facts are that human dna matching all but one of the passengers on flight 77 was found at the Pentagon. Hundereds of people saw the plane crash into the the building. You show an almost childlike ignorance of the facts. Do you believe in unicorns too? This sentence is priceless, "The scene, in short, was not what I would have expected from a strike by a large jetliner. It was, however, exactly what one would expect if a missile had struck the Pentagon. ..." How many airliners have crashed into buildings at hight speed Russ? Yeh, thats right only the three on 911. The reason that the impressions on the buildings were different than the one at the Pentagon is THAT THE G.D. BULIDINGS HAD COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CONSTRUCTION. Oh and that missle that hundreds of people was as an airliner must have had a hologram disguise. As for the nano particle hoax, I will beleive it when someone other than a fringe scientist working a comminity college can show me the chian of custody of the "dust" and their methodology. The elements present in the "nano particles" were present in large amounts in the massive furnace that was the twin towers. Fires can create some amazing things. Your comment about the grenade making an Ipod is a false analogy. Your foolish psuedo science approach may convince stony college kids but I see right thru your flase arguments. Dude, I suggest that you let go of your dolphin, put the cheetos down and come out of mom and dad' s garage and join the rest of us in real world.

Herschel_Greenspan says, "Hundereds of people saw the plane crash into the the building."

Russell says: Where are the links to these "Hundereds" of eyewitness accounts? You said earlier that "A security camera at a gas station recorded the plane milliseconds before impact." I said BS, where's the photo? You didn't provide it because it doesn't exist. Like your imaginary roster of witnesses, it's a fantasy. A handful of people saw a plane approach the Pentagon, and their accounts do not, in most cases, confirm the government's story. A few witnesses perhaps thought they saw, from a distance, a plane strike the building, yet the data from the black box itself says that they are in error. See the Pandora's Black Box video on the Pilots For 9/11 Truth website athttp://pilotsfor911truth.org/or in four parts athttp://tinyurl.com/y8semqt

Herschel_Greenspan says, "This sentence is priceless, "The scene, in short, was not what I would have expected from a strike by a large jetliner. It was, however, exactly what one would expect if a missile had struck the Pentagon."

Russell says: Recall that this is testimony from Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, Pentagon employee and eyewitness to the events at the Pentagon on 9/11. She feels that the official story is not a satisfactory explanation, and that "More information is certainly needed regarding the events of 9/11 and the events leading up to that terrible day."http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/#K....

Herschel Greenspan says, "How many airliners have crashed into buildings at hight speed Russ? Yeh, that's right only the three on 911. The reason that the impressions on the buildings were different than the one at the Pentagon is THAT THE G.D. BULIDINGS HAD COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CONSTRUCTION."

Russell says: WHOA! Chill dogg, no need to get your panties all in a bunch about it... just take a few deep breaths and try to follow the logic. First, the "COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CONSTRUCTION." mantra is BS. Yes, steel reinforced concrete predominated at the Pentagon, and steel supports with concrete floors was the mode at the towers, but they were both multistory building with lots of windows. There is no way that a Boeing 757 with 124 ft 10 in wingspan can enter a 20x20 ft hole in a wall and not even damage the windows to either side. Get it? That's where the official story begins to fall apart. Indeed, here's what Major General Albert Stubblebine (U.S. Army (ret) Former Commanding General of U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, 1981 - 1984. Also commanded the U.S. Army's Electronic Research and Development Command and the U.S. Army's Intelligence School and Center. Former head of Imagery Interpretation for Scientific and Technical Intelligence. 32-year Army career) has to say on the subject:

"General Stubblebine: I am Major General Albert Stubblebine. I am retired Army Major-General. In my last assignment -- my last command -- I was responsible for all of the Army's strategic intelligence forces around the world. I had responsibility for the Signals Intelligence, Photo Intelligence, Counter Intelligence, Human Intelligence. They all belonged to me, in my last assignment. :

I was supposed to find out what the enemy was doing, before the enemy did it so that we could take action against the enemy. That's Intelligence, OK, before the fact. So, we always -- always -- rely not on a single piece of data, before we make a statement, but on multiple and the more pieces of data that you have that correlate, the better you know exactly what is going on. :

So I have had a lot of experience looking at photographs. I have looked at many, many different kinds of photographs, from many, many different platforms on many, many different countries, around the world.

Interviewer: OK. So on September the 11th, in 2001, what hit the Pentagon?

General Stubblebine: I don't know exactly what hit it, but I do know, from the photographs that I have analyzed and looked at very, very carefully, it was not an airplane.

Interviewer: What made you believe that?

General Stubblebine: Well, for one thing, if you look at the hole that was made in the Pentagon, the nose penetrated far enough so that there should have been wing marks on the walls of the Pentagon. I have been unable to find those wing marks. So where were they? Did this vessel -- vehicle, or whatever it was -- have wings? Apparently not, because if it had had wings, they would have made marks on the side of the Pentagon.

One person counteracted my theory, and said, "Oh, you've got it all wrong. And the reason that it's wrong is that as the airplane came across, one wing tipped down and hit the ground and broke off." I said, "Fine, that's possible, one wing could have broken off." But if I understand airplanes correctly, most airplanes have two wings. I haven't met an airplane with only one wing. So where was the mark for the second wing? OK, one broke off -- there should have been a mark for the second wing. I could not find that in any of the photographs that I've analyzed. Now I've been very careful to not say what went in there. Why? Because you don't have that evidence. :

Moreover, if you examine the testimony of those who saw a plane approach the Pentagon, they all describe a trajectory that is at odds with the official account. I.e., whatever hit the building came in at an angle different from the path of the plane. The reason that the hole in the west wall is so tiny is not because "THE G.D. BULIDINGS HAD COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CONSTRUCTION." It is because whatever hit the Pentagon didn't have any effing wings! That is what is established in Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski's "priceless" comment and Major General Stubblebine's observations.

Herschel_Greenspan says that, "human dna matching all but one of the passengers on flight 77 was found at the Pentagon."

Russell says: So who says that... the same people that told you a plane hit the Pentagon? They couldn't find luggage, seats, airplane parts... just a black box, showing that a plane overflew the building, and some little chunks of flesh... that's bloody unlikely. But if those DNA samples did in fact exist, where did they get them? When a new investigation finds out what really happened the passengers of Flight 77, we'll know.

Herschel_Greenspan says, "IAs for the nano particle hoax, I will beleive it when someone other than a fringe scientist working a comminity college can show me the chian of custody of the "dust" and their methodology."

Russell says: The authors are hardly in the "comminity college" realm. E.g., the lead author, Niels H. Harrit, is an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and is the author/or co-author of nearly 60 peer reviewed scientific papers. Dr. Harrit has also served on numerous occasions as a peer reviewer/referee for scientific papers written by others. Here he discusses the evidence of nano-thermite in WTC dust on Danish television:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56KFHI...

As for the chain of custody and methodology, you need only read the paper 'Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe.' But that's probably more than you can handle, so here's the abstract:

"We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center. Examination of four of these samples, collected from separate sites, is reported in this paper. These red/gray chips show marked similarities in all four samples. One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red material contains grains approximately 100 nm across which are largely iron oxide, while aluminum is contained in tiny plate-like structures. Separation of components using methyl ethyl ketone demonstrated that elemental aluminum is present. The iron oxide and aluminum are intimately mixed in the red material. When ignited in a DSC device the chips exhibit large but narrow exotherms occurring at approximately 430 Â°C, far below the normal ignition temperature for conventional thermite. Numerous iron-rich spheres are clearly observed in the residue following the ignition of these peculiar red/gray chips. The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic."http://tinyurl.com/de6448

Herschel_Greenspan says, "The elements present in the "nano particles" were present in large amounts in the massive furnace that was the twin towers."

Russell says: "massive furnace"... more nonsense. There were the initial short-lived fuel explosions, but they had no more effect on the structural steel than does the fire from a gas stove's burner on the grate above it. In a very short time the WTC fires were pouring out black smoke, a signature of oxygen starvation and, hence, low heat. After the buildings disintegrated, there was molten metal detected in the remains of all three structures... but you can't have it both ways here. Molten metal is a signature not of an ordinary hydrocarbon fire, but of thermite.

As for the 'elements' present, there was lots of iron, but it was mostly alloyed in the steel; it was not present in any significant quantity as the chemical compound and thermite ingredient ferric oxide. There was probably a bit of aluminum around, and the airplanes delivered a bit more, but there is no way, outside of your bizarre fantasies, that the impacts shredded the plane's fuselages down to the nano-scale.

So much for your arguments... you know they are bogus, and at the end, all you've got left is to fling out some hackneyed insults. To wit: "I suggest that you let go of your dolphin, put the cheetos down and come out of mom and dad' s garage and join the rest of us in real world."

Herschel, your talent for cutting insults is exceeded only by your grasp of the subtleties of politics and science... oh yeah, and no doubt economics. You say, "It is almost as much fun as jousting with the Ron Paultards." It's a bit of a digression, but are you aware that the so-called Federal Reserve (for which Ron Paul would like to commission an audit) isn't a government institution? That it's a private enterprise, owned by heirs to the banksters to whom Woodrow Wilson and a corrupt Congress ceded the power to create money in 1913? And do you know, BTW, that the US, the vaunted 'Land of the Free' has more people in jails and prisons, both per capita and in sum, than any other country on the planet? Anyhow, I would assume that you're spewing insults and misinformation in those other forums as well as here, and you're obviously every bit as proud of it: but hey, as long as you're having fun... and you do make a good foil in these dialogues.

Back on topic, you've so far ignored my little challenge question, the one that Kratatoa is even now struggling so hard to understand. Remember? The setup is:

2) The next day, an hour after a plane hit WTC1, an errant jet lumbers southward through the most heavily protected airspace on the planet, straight toward the headquarters of the mightiest military on Earth. Even though the nearby Andrews Air Force base normally has two squadrons of fighters on alert, none are sent up to intercept the plane. It now has only to dive straight into the Pentagon to wipe out Rumsfeld and most of the upper echelons of the military command; but, inexplicably, it swings left and executes a tight, aerobatic, 270 degree turn that brings it around to the west wall.

3) The section of the Pentagon called the 'West Wall' had been undergoing reinforcement and remodeling for about two years. Most of the tenants, including the Marines, had long since been relocated to other offices. But some remained...

The question is:

What were the duties of most of those still working in the section of the Pentagon that was so severely damaged on 9/11/'01?

It's obvious once you get it, but only a few people have seen it right away...

I hate to resort to ad hominem attacks, but when people continuously throw out ridiculous statements, I have found it is best, instead of trying to take the unserious seriously (which is itself ridiculous), to just ridicule these idiots.

Herschel_Greenspan and Kratatoa have proven themselves, by their comments, beyond any reasonable doubt that they are total tards (or total Establishment tools, but it's same thing really).

In answer to Russell, the Office of Naval Intelligence was the only occupant of the re-furbished Pentagon Wing. See link below.

Here's the most comprehensive report I've seen yet to justify 9/11 as an inside job, and thankfully ties in the criminality of former CIA Director G. H. W. Bush as both Vice President (to clueless Reagan) and President.

"[N]ot only were the buildings targets, but ... specific offices within each building were the designated targets. ... [T]he attacks of September 11th were intended to cover-up the clearing of $240 billion dollars in securities covertly created in September 1991 to fund a covert economic war against the Soviet Union, during which 'unknown' western investors bought up much of the Soviet industry, with a focus on oil and gas. The attacks of September 11th also served to derail multiple Federal investigations away from crimes associated with the 1991 covert operation.~ E. P. Heidner

The above explains motives. Below, we have evidence of the perpetrator's means.

NIST's Final Report on WTC-7 divides the first 18 stories of collapse into 3 stages. Stage 2 fell 8 stories or 100+ feet at "gravitational acceleration."

The ramifications of free-fall in any stage of collapse in any of the WTC buildings is additional energy sources (like explosives) had to be planted. Therefore the circle of 9/11 conspirators was much larger than 19 hijackers sitting in airplanes and included insiders.

The lack of an explanation for the breaking the laws of physics is admittedly but one piece of evidence of a crime, but it is a glaring one and one that can't be easily covered up by political appointees and discussion thread instigators.

This single free-fall feature brings awareness to the lies, cracks open the door in our nation's collective disbelief, and shuts down the coincidence theorists, who with the eagerness of those cashing government paychecks all too vocally & viciously lump everything about 9/11 -- including the advertising, the lead-up, the execution, the cover-up, and the distasteful follow-up -- as just "unfortunate coincidences."

"Perhaps the greatest fantasy of the present moment is that there is a choice here. We can look forward or backward, turn the page on history or not. Don't believe it. History matters."~ Tom Engelhardt

"Truth, through her eternal laws, unveils error. Truth causes sin to betray itself... Even the disposition to excuse guilt or to conceal it is punished. The avoidance of justice and the denial of truth tend to perpetuate sin, invoke crime, jeopardize self-control, and mock divine mercy."~ Mary Baker Eddy (ca. 1865)

RusselG,LOL, you are a truther and a Paultard. You sould get into the Illuminati thing and you could be a triple threat idiot, a hat trick of insanity, or the cycle of stupidity. Oh teh stoopid berns, stop it... you are killing me.. I can't stop laughing.

What are the ramifications of building free-fall both in the observed event of 9/11 and the larger political context?

++++++

For the record, free-fall is not a hypothetical, so don't try to weasel out of the question by saying you don't answer hypothetical questions.

Aside from NIST's Final Report on WTC-7 officially stating that 8 stories (100+ feet) of structure fell at gravitational acceleration, any high school student with video player on their PC can scale it appropriately, collect the data, and prove this just like NIST did in their report.

Yes, I've seen other "coincidence theorists" mention that (a) a portion of WTC-7 was scooped out from the towers collapse severing 30% of the perimeter columns and (b) fires weakened the steel by 65% of their normal strength.

Even if we accept those assertions at face value (they did come from NIST), the remaining 70% of the perimeter columns plus the remaining interior columns both at 35% their normal strength is a RESISTANCE GREATER THAN ZERO that would have prevented any collapse at gravitational acceleration.

So if additional energy sources weren't involved to push 8 stories of resistive material out of the way of the falling mass to enable the sudden transition into the observed uniform free-fall over these 8 stories that NIST labels stage 2, THEN WHAT HAPPENED?

Was 9/11 was just one big rinky-dink coincidence including the breaking of God's laws of physics?

Or can you step out of your disinformation role, think outside the box and the government's talking points, and answer how 8 stories of material in the path of greatest resistance got turned into zero resistance?

Yep, please answer:

What are the ramifications of building free-fall both in the observed event of 9/11 and the larger political context?

I'm just another Blues Brother on a mission from God. My directives concerning 9/11 were clear. Feed my sheep.

"Though error hides behind a lie and excuses guilt, error cannot forever be concealed. Truth, through her eternal laws, unveils error. Truth causes sin to betray itself, and sets upon error the mark of the beast. Even the disposition to excuse guilt or to conceal it is punished. The avoidance of justice and the denial of truth tend to perpetuate sin, invoke crime, jeopardize self-control, and mock divine mercy."~ Mary Baker Eddy (ca. 1865)

Up jumps another truther troll. All of these brand new posters just happened to show up when the Independant lost its connection to fact based journalism. MaxBridges, you do know that Mary Baker Eddy founded the Christian Scientist movement. That is an excellent person for a truther to quote because the Christian Scientists believe, like the truthers in the power of faith. rather than science. ....and the laughs just keep on comming.

"It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, nor provide them for human use; else Jesus would have recommended and employed them in his healing. : The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love."- Mary Baker Eddy

Russell says: Well if your laughter sounds as demented as the crap you've been posting here, it's evident that you're ready to be fitted for your straitjacket now... No surprise... it figures that a mind as rigid as yours would undergo a meltdown as the little fantasy world it has constructed begins to come apart...

But hey, you put up a spirited defense of the A-rabs with box cutters, Bush/Cheney certified conspiracy theory... for a little while anyway... but the arguments in support of the official version have become increasingly thin as more evidence has emerged. They are now revealed (as you have been so helpful in demonstrating) totally untenable, transparent lies.

And now, with your back against the wall, you've resorted to your ultimate weapon, you've pulled out your big gun: "Don't you dare say anything that contradicts the official conspiracy theory, or I, HERSCHEL GREENSPAN, will call you a 'TARD." Wow... that'll shut 'em up Herschel. You da man... LOL...

Hey Max, good job on the "who was in the west wing?" question...over half of the auditors and accountants looking for the $2.3 trillion, among other monies, were killed in that attack, and of course ALL of the records were destroyed...

Sounds like maybe you are in need of Christian Science treatment to give you a healing in your misguided beliefs in the erroneous 9/11 coincidence theories.

Mary Baker Eddy made many references to mathematics to provide readily understood analogies that illustrate the difference between Truth and error.

2+3=5 is a truth; 2+3=4.7 is an error.

The error seems to exist to muck up human plans and designs, but only so long as one believes the error to be true. Once exposed and corrected, the error loses its destructive power and ceases to exist.

The laws of mathematics are divine truths that impartially (and incompletely) reveal God and God's love to his creation. God's children are allowed to discover and employ the laws of mathematics in explaining and predicting our physical world: from the orbits of celestial bodies to the interaction of subatomic particles to create energy and matter, or from the speed of light to the calculus of falling objects.

A 9/11 annotated quote from Jesus:

"And a man's [America's] foes shall be they of his own household [domestic enemies to the Constitution; the Bush Administration and congressional, judicial, and media enablers; those who don't question authority; those who ignore historical precedent of government misconduct]."

A 9/11 annotated quote from Mrs. Eddy:

"Error is a belief [in the government's 9/11 conspiracy theory] without understanding [simple high school physics]. ...

"The remedy consists in probing the trouble to the bottom [9/11 is the elephant in the room], in finding [my challenge to you] and casting out by denial the error of belief [perpetrated by commissions, agencies, and their flawed investigations] which produces a mortal disorder [fear; xenophobia; shredding of our Constitution; distrust of government; diminished reputation in the world; angry partisan divisions in society], never honoring erroneous belief [like that the US government would never intentionally hurt US citizens] with the title of law [USA PATRIOT ACT; Military Commission Act] nor yielding obedience to it. ... In Christian Science, a denial of Truth [high school physics applied to 9/11] is fatal, while a just acknowledgment of Truth and of what it has done for us is an effectual help [in setting right our governance]."

More quotes from Mrs. Eddy:

"[I]f evil is uncondemned, it is undenied and nurtured. : When needed tell the truth concerning the lie. Evasion of Truth cripples integrity, and casts thee down from the pinnacle."

"Error is a coward before Truth. Divine Science insists that time will prove all this."

I'm just another Blues Brother on a mission from God. My directives concerning 9/11 were clear. "Feed my sheep."

Now I have seen it all. In the world of 911 c/t jackassery Max Bridges has my vote for MVP. Who would have thought that a c/t fan would be a fan of the Church of Christ Science. He is channeling Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy for their takes on 911. The longer this thread goes on the more bizzare it becomes. Now I don't know if I should laugh or shed a tear.

HG, I've got a guy on the other 9-11 thread that claims to be a PhD in engineering. He even offered to prove it. But when I took him up on his offer, and asked him to scan and post his PhD, he demanded $500!

Look on the bright side. With all these new accounts, it is unlikely that many of these froot loops live in Santa Barbara.

Thank you for the vote for 911 jackassery MVP. You defenders of the coincidence theories from the government, though, will be proven the winners. To the third and fourth generation such will be your embarrassment like the 1930's Nazi's are to today's German youth.

As for the pairing of Christian Science to 9/11 Truth, your comments exhibit a very shallow understanding of both.

9/11 conspiracy theories occupy a wide spectrum, some of it unfounded, and in cases blatantly unbelievable if not untruthful, speculation. I agree. Legions of individual conspiracy theories can be thrown out without disproving the validity of the case. Why?

Because not all 9/11 conspiracy theories are fringe, unfounded, unbelievable, nutty, loony, or delusional. Some are outright truthful being based on mathematics.http://www.youtube.com/ae911truth

Truth is a synonym or attribute of God in CS.

Are we in agreement that the laws of mathematics and physics are universal Truths? A student of CS can agree with that, even though they endeavor to take a more spiritual view (e.g., "awakening from a false sense of life, substance, and mind in matter") and may try to side-step 9/11 with:

"Mere historic incidents and personal events are frivolous and of no moment, unless they illustrate the ethics of Truth."~ Mary Baker Eddy

The catch is the phrase: "unless they illustrate the ethics of Truth."

What do the ethics of Truth dictate? Do they suggest that we (or a student of CS) keep silent and let a falsehood persist?

Ignoring countless other anomalies about 9/11, the Truth is that free-fall happened in WTC-7. This is what the 9/11 Truth Movement has been saying all along and that NIST officially reports in their Final Report on WTC-7.

In belittling me and the Christian Science faith, you avoided answering my question:

What are the ramifications of building free-fall both in the observed event of 9/11 and the larger political context?

"Sometimes it seems to me that the "nuts" are those who hold to what they've been told with an almost religious fervor despite all of the evidence to the contrary - the ones who won't even consider that there was a conspiracy. There are so many anomalies to the "official" investigation that you can't blame it on oversight or incompetence. I am familiar with the scientists and qualified professionals to whom you refer, and their findings are convincing, credible, and presented according to scientific protocol - in stark contrast to the findings of the "official" investigation. In addition, numerous intelligence agents and government officials have now come forward with their very informed opinions that the 911 Commission was a farce at best or a cover-up at worst. My experience at Ground Zero is but one more piece of the puzzle."~ Kurt Sonnenfeldhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article160...

One thing that amazes me is Insurance. No one hardly ever asks who in the whole world who would insure against terrorists attacks. Lloyds of London will not insure against terrorist attacks. The very fact an insurance company would insure against terrorist attacks is proof something crooked happened. Insurance companies are the biggest organized crime syndicate in America and no American taxpayer can get the coverage afforded the owner of the world trade center. Never Ever Never nor has this coverage ever been offered to a policyholder before in American history. Find one incident ever offered in the history of insurance companies prior to 911. THERE IS NOT ONE. Every one if you do not believe me, call your insurance agent and tell them you want your property insured for terrorist attacks, war, civilian uprisings (riots). Post back here everyone that got coverage.

I would like to propose a test. Anyone in the world take say 100 gallons of jet Fuel (High octane diesel) take all the garbage you can pile up tire, cinder blocks, just garbage pour the Jet Fuel(diesel) on this pile of junk and light a match and see if everything in the pile completely vaporizes and whatever is left burns for 3 months.

People of America it takes more faith to believe what the government has approved of how the Twin Towers fell than to just use common sense. No structure on earth since the beginning of time has ever completely dissolved, vaporized into then air from high octane gas. Except Nagasaki Japan. We know why they disappeared and it was not diesel fuel in those bombs. Those of you that can't afford 100 gallons just use 5 gallons and start a fire and see if everything vaporizes. All politicians are as crooked as a dogs hind leg. All are crooked, there is not a single man or woman that is in political office that is honest. All politicians seek their own gain at the expense of the tax payers. We are in very serious and troubling times. As soon as the collapse of America's money most likely this year 2010 or at the very latest 2011 all alive will be introduced to the mark of the beast 666. This is the number of a man or man's monetary system. All will be asked to take this mark as it will stop the abduction of children, all will be able to purchase government food programs, it will appear to heal all the beast's monetary problems for mankind. In the name of the Father, The Son, and the Holy Ghost I ask that your word be quickened immediately now in this minute and bring your judgment upon the whole earth O great God of Israel, I AM THAT I AM unleash the four horses of the Apocalypse upon the earth pour out your wrath so that from the least to the greatest all will know that you are the one and only true God, the God of Abraham, Jacob, and Isaac the I AM THAT I AM of Moses day to present.

Great article! It would be interesting to look at the arguments put forth by Pilots for 911 Truth, as they have some disturbing facts about the "plane" that hit the Pentagon.There are also many interesting issues concerning the lawsuit by April Gallop.